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About

Zenly is a social mapping network that uses video game technology and a 3D camera to provide each of its users with a personalized, well-rounded view of the world.

Zenly's goal is to act as a way to track your closest friends in real time.

Instead of waiting for your friends to text you their location or hoping they update their status on social media,

you can track their exact steps as they happen.

This project presents an approach to address user issues and elevate their experience by redesigning the application's interface and incorporating new features.

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To better understand Zenly’s background, competitors, and who Zenly’s users are, we started by conducting research with the following goals:

Research Goals

1. Understand the main features of Zenly.
   
2. Identify Zenly’s competitors and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.
   
3. Identify Zenly’s user group.
4. Understand the experiences people have with using Zenly.
   
5. Discover goals, needs, motivations, and frustrations of Zenly users.
   

Before making changes to the application, it is improtant to identify Zenly's key features. This ensures that we maintain its unique value proposition while enhancing the user experience through redesign. Through the data gathered, we narrowed down to 3 main features.

Mapping

With Zenly's mapping feature, users can recenter their map or review recent highlights easily. They can track their past locations and share cherished memories with friends.

Searching

Zenly's search feature allows users to locate friends, view their current activities, companions, duration at a location, explore recent highlights and nearby venues like bars and restaurants.

Messaging

Zenly enables seamless connection with friends through individual and group chats, supporting up to 100 people per message. Users can easily initiate conversations, share pictures or videos with location tags.

We conducted a thorough analysis of Zenly's primary competitors to identify their strengths and weaknesses. This analysis helped us understand what sets each service apart and why people might prefer one over the others.

Life360

Strengths:

• Features including location sharing, driving reports, and emergency assistance

• Allows users to set up customizable geofences, enabling alerts when family members enter or leave designated areas

Weaknesses:

• Lacks the social features and community engagement Interface may be perceived as more complex and cluttered.
  

Glympse

Strengths:

• Users can share their location for a specific duration, providing control over privacy and reducing concerns about constant tracking.
  

Weaknesses:

• Does not offer extensive social integration or features for discovering nearby friends or connecting with others beyond location sharing.
  

After our thorough research, we started examining Zenly's user group which consists of mostly young adults and teenagers.

Young Adult (Age 18 - 25)

Student (Age 13-17)

Wants:

• More advanced mapping capabilities to discover trendy places.
  
• Post stories.

Pains:

• Difficulty in discovering trendy local spots around the area.
  
• Not knowing how to access exisiting features in the application.
  

Wants:

• Implementation of a feed page to post her activity and to view her friends' activities.
  
• Build in map for directions to my friend.

Pains:

• Unable to share information with specific groups of friends only.
  
• Having to use other map applications to get directions.
  

Following that, we conducted a survey with several individuals to better understand their motivations, experiences, and challenges with using the application. This helped us gain insights into the benefits they derive from Zenly and the issues they encounter while using it.

Reasons for using the application:

• 9 out of 17 Zenly users use the app for leisure, while 11 use it to track friends and family.
  
• 13 users were influenced to use Zenly by friends, and only 2 use it for its unlocking places feature.
  

Opinion on Zenly's Interface:

• Only 2 users find Zenly's interface user-friendly, while 11 need time to get used to it.
  
• 3 users are confused, and 1 finds the interface too simplistic.
  

What They Like:

• 14 users appreciate tracking friends' locations, 10 like the 'bumping' feature, and 8 enjoy spamming friends with Zenly emotes.
  
• 1 user likes unlocking titles, and 1 likes showing off places visited.
  
• 5 users feel secure knowing friends can track their location in emergencies.
  

Overall User Experience:

• 4 users find Zenly fun or pleasant, 4 find it average, and 9 have negative experiences.
  
• 13 users cite issues with intuitiveness and navigation.
  

Here are some of their responses:

1. "I mainly use it to check my friends' locations. Since everything I need is on the main page, I don't explore other features much. The app could do a better job of introducing these features."
   
2. "It's not very intuitive. The navigation could be improved, and I struggle to understand what the icons represent."
   
3. "It's not a pleasant experience. It feels confusing even after using it multiple times."
   

Based on what we gathered from our research and interviews, we created a persona that accurately presents who we are designing for. This persona served as a guide throughout the design process, ensuring that the solutions we developed remained firmly centered on our user's needs and preferences. Meet Michelle.

What are they feeling?

• Frustration due to inability to navigate the app effectively and discern button functions.
  
• Irritation at the inconsistency with the UI button.
  
• Feelings of defeat stemming from not knowing how to access various features.
  

With our user persona in mind, we brainstormed new features for our prototype and evaluated the existing design using the 10 Heuristic Principles. Our goal was to improve the user interface and experience while integrating new features seamlessly within the existing functionalities.

Some new features we decided to include are:

1. Personal profile feed for users to post stories.
2. In-app maps for providing directions.
3. Recommendations of trendy places in the area.

Having our goals sorted out, we proceed to craft user task and user journey to explore how the user’s would be interacting with these new features to complete key tasks. Such as getting directions to a specific friend.

After comprehending the user's interactions, we started designing Zenly's screens by sketching low-fidelity wireframes focusing on the features that we wanted to implement.

Home Page

Settings

Search

When user icon is pressed

Check in

Message

Recentre

user location

Broadcast Page

User Profile

View Story

Size changes according to slider

Add Story

Broadcast

FAQ

Slider to

adjust distance

Broadcast

Profile Page

My World

Back Button

FAQ

Show friend list

Profile Picture

My world

Edit Post

Scrollable

Brings to location in map

Like and comment

Map

Settings

Map changes according to mode of transport

Drop down to change mode of transport

GPS

Having our ideas sketched out, we needed to make sure that the structure and flow of the app is intuitive for our users, before working on the visual design. Hence, we created a mid-fidelity prototype on Figma to conduct testings and iterate on the design as needed before moving forward with finalizing the design.

Using the mid-fidelity prototype, we conducted offline tests with testers. During these sessions, we asked testers to share their thoughts and emotions as they interacted with the prototype. The testing generally had positive feedbacks except for some minor changes needed. We then proceeded to create our high-fidelity prototype and did a round of AB testings. Here are some of the changes we made from the AB testings.

1. Icon Testing

Users expressed confusion regarding the icons, as some could have multiple interpretations. For instance, the storybook icon might be interpreted as a bookmark function.

After

Before

2. Close Function Testing

Users shown a preference for the swipe-down function, particularly when closing pop-ups. They find this action more intuitive and comfortable compared to other methods.

Before

After

3. Pop Up Testing

Users find that pop ups with the light background stand up more and are easier to see.

Before

After

4. Title Wording Testing

We were going for a more hippy title but users have expressed difficulty in understanding the application and confusion regarding certain titles

Before

After

After incoporating the revisions, here is our final prototype.

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