Ding Dong is a mobile application that helps bridge the gap in any community you may belong to. With features such as a real-time newsfeed, interactive map, communal calendar, and private messaging—there should be no problem finding a your community no matter where you are located.
I worked solo on this project, curating the user interviews, the problem statement, prototypes, designs, and everything in between.
Throughout my time in university, I always felt as if there was an underlying disconnect between the students and faculty at my university and the permanent residents that lived in town. My friends and I missed out on countless events that occurred because nothing was advertised to us as students unless it was a university sponsored event. This caused us to feel as though we were never truly locals despite having lived in the community for years. I believe that everyone would take part in community events if they had the right tools to know what is happening, when, and where.
Starting out with the “why,” I work with the mindset of determining what users need in order to clearly understand why users would benefit from this mobile app. Rather than asking directly what they would benefit from, I ask what they currently use and how they feel about their current experience. This allows me to get an unbiased perspective into the tools that are currently being used. Knowing this, I identify my interviews’ objectives, questions, and target audience from there.
Define how often users find themselves lost navigating their community.
Determine how often users feel stuck not knowing what to do or where to go to meet people within their community.
Define how to solve the problem. What services are currently being used?
Following the survey responses, I requested 2–3 people that answered the questionnaire to follow up with me in a 10–15 minute interview to get a more in-depth understanding of what users are looking for and where their pain-points are at.
I chose to target an audience of people aged 18–65 as I needed to include college aged students as well as permanent residences in the community, which could very well include senior citizens living in the community. Because of this, I needed to ensure that my mobile application was incredibly user friendly and easy to understand at first glance.
DingDong is app is designed to be accessible and usable for everyone. When coming up with the style guide and UI Kit, I was designing based on the accessibility standards and guidelines like W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Google’s “Accessibility for Teams” to allow for a better experience when navigating the app.
Live newsfeed that allows users to communicate with their neighbors within the community to keep everyone informed and up to date on everything going on in the community,
Communal calendar for everyone in the neighborhood ensuring that everyone knows what is happening, when and where. Users are able to add their own events for their neighbors to see as well as view upcoming events.
Users can easily navigate their way around the community filtering through sub-communities within the larger neighborhood, and the type of place they’re looking for.
Users have the option to message within groups that they belong to, or would like to join, in addition to private messaging individual neighbors.
Settings that are customized to each private chat with neighbors.
User profile that previews what neighbors will see when they view a user’s profile.
Profiles are divided into sections allowing information to be grasped in pieces so as to avoid information overload and giving users the freedom to decide what they want to learn about their neighbors.
Exhibition designed for a gallery with a 3x8 foot wall space in mind, I wanted to showcase the components of the brand that helped build DingDong. The UI components would accompany a brief description of the problem that inspired the creation of the app as well as its key elements. In addition, a demo marketing video played on repeat alongside a message telling viewers to scan a QR code and demo the app on their phones. Created using removable vinyl.
Created using removable vinyl.
Created using Adobe After Effects.
Click the screen to play!
If I had the chance to redesign the prototype for DingDong, there are a few changes I’d make on the second iteration, whether to the design itself or a part of my design process. I’d definitely take better care in ensuring that my design accurately reflects what the user wants (according to research). In this case, it’d be focusing more on the Calendar tab and potentially designing a complete user flow showcasing how a user might add or join an event on the calendar.
In addition to a higher fidelity prototype with complete user flows and user-tested design, I would also begin to incorporate print design to add to the experience of building community. I think that adding flyers to market the mobile app around town would draw community members into downloading the app. I would also design posters to display the community calendar in print form to help advertise the events and further push a sense of community.
