Nirali Shah

What is MyTyde?

MyTyde started out as a way to help college students find events and experiences to make the most out of their college years. It is a campus event platform targeted towards college students that will help them never miss an experience. On this platform, students can follow, find and save all events of interest — while event organizers can manage, promote, and share their events.

Problem

Recently, MyTyde was seeing a decline in number of users returning to the app. To better understand the cause of the low retention rate, MyTyde conducted user research and found a few common problems that most users were facing while using the app.

• In the current design, when students followed a particular group's calendar they can only learn about their upcoming events. Through research we found that students not only want to learn about the upcoming events, but instead wanted to find communities that they could participate and socialize for a longer period of time.
• Students wanted a way to get regular updates/notifications for the groups and events they follow and also wanted a way to interact with the group organizers and other students with similar interests.
• Event organizers wanted a way to make group-wide announcements and get students feedback. While students wanted a way to actively participate in group discussion even after the event had ended.
• In the current design, students could only view upcoming events but not interact with them. This design was limiting for both group organizers and members. Through research we found that the group organizers wanted to know how many students would be attending their event, and students wanted a way to bookmark future events and keep track of events that they have attended in the past.
• In the current design, there were no reminders or notifications about the upcoming events which would sometimes lead students to miss the events they wanted to attend.
• In the current design, there was a feature that allowed students to create their own calendar only through their account page which made the feature less visible. This feature would help students organize their own events but given the placement of the feature, several students would miss seeing this feature and not create their own events.

Announcements

Based on the user feedback, we found that the group administrators wanted a way to make group-wide announcements to connect with their members and get their feedback.

So we created an announcements page where the group administrators would post announcements, share information about upcoming events and create polls. This way the group members can interact with the administrators post, provide feedback and continue the conversation even after the event.

New Design

Groups

In the current design, the users could explore groups during the sign up process and through the account settings page. Due to lack of visibility of this feature, most users did not realize that they have the option to explore other groups.

Based on the user feedback and MyTyde's new design approach, we re-evaluated the old design and realized that there was a need to rethink the groups feature. Since we were shifting our focus to helping students explore and build communities, it was necessary to have groups page in the forefront of the app, so that the members could easily explore different groups.

Some of the key features added in the groups page:

• Simpler way for the user to view groups they are a part of
• Option for a user to start a new group
• Explore groups based on different categories
• In the group details page, user can learn more about the group (description, admin, upcoming events) and an option to join the group

Old Design

New Design

Events

The Events feature is one of the main pillars of the application. In the current design, members could only view upcoming events but not interact with them. Based on the user feedback, we found that this design was limiting for both group administrators and members. Group administrators wanted to know how many people will be attending their event, while, the members wanted a way to save future events and keep track of events that they have attended in the past.

Given the feedback, we completely redesigned the events page so that it would match with the look and feel of the app. In the redesigned events page, users will have the option to RSVP to an event, and view all upcoming, attending, saved and past events.

Old Design

New Design

Messages

Based on the user research, it was evident that both the group administrators and members wanted to communicate even after the event had ended. In the current design, there is no way for the users to communicate with others.

To help carry forward the conversation outside, we added a messaging feature where users could interacts with other group members and administrators.

New Design

Notifications

In the current design, users would sometime miss going to an event because there was not a way to set reminders about the events. There was not a notifications page that would alert users about an upcoming event. Given the user feedback, we decided to add a notifications page that would remind members about an upcoming event, notify members when a new event is added in a group, and let group administrators know users are interacting with their announcements.

New Design

User profile

In the current design, when the users are viewing others profile, they were only able to see information such as their profile photo and name. As the goal of the redesign was to encourage students to connect with others and build community, we found that the current design was limiting in terms of helping students connect with one another. In the redesign, when a user is visiting other's profile page, they would now be able to see the groups that individual is part of and also see the groups that they have in common. This was done to help users connect with other members and help them build community.

Old Design

New Design