Project Overview
I contributed to finding the best way to improve the experience of the LGBTQ+ community as those within the community, sought to establish authentic connections with each other.
Problem Statement
How might we provide the LGBTQ+ community an inclusive space central to their experience, empowering them to cultivate meaningful connections?
Business Goal
Determine how our strategic partner, Instagram, could improve the experience of its customers who identify as being a part of the LGBTQ+ community, then focus on a niche market within this user demographic.
Discovery
Insight from strategic research allowed our team to determine:
Members of the LGBTQ+ community date and form friendships within their community, through a popular social media app that does not have mandatory, binary, gender identity labels during the account signup process. This insight caused a pivotal shift in the project, instead of creating dating app, we decided to create an app more focused on cultivating meaningful relationships through curated content.
Affinity Mapping Insights
Recommendations
Through data gained from evaluative research, four categories of recommendations were given for the next cycle of the design process.
-
Icons
-
Messaging & Notifications
-
Tab bar
-
Continual usability testing
We also provided a post-launch guide (HEART Framework) for our partner to use after they implemented our prototype.