Ironhack Bootcamp Final Project:

Creating a user flow for a user that doesn’t yet exist for a platform that wasn’t open to the public as the whole environment was in simplest terms super wobbly and ever-changing.

A quick intro:

Gather-in is the first real client I worked with as a UI/UX designer. Last year I attended one of their events, and when I mentioned that I was planning to study at Ironhack, right there and then, the founders Memet Ali & Tan offered me an internship after school.

Luckily, I didn't have to wait that long. When Ironhack gave us the chance to choose the client for our final project, I chose gather-in. They must have wanted to work with me, too, as they put up with all those tedious procedures, long calls with the TA’s, and endless signatures. I am totally grateful for that!

In the end, I got to work with one of the coolest, and funniest clients in Ironhack history.

My role in this project was:
UX/UI designer

From start to finish it took:
13 days (and nights) in December 2022

Team:
I was on my own on the Ironhack side, but Gather-in made me feel like part of a great team by taking me into their Slack channel, giving me access to all Figma files, and answering all my questions.

Deliverables:
Agreeing with the client at every stage of the process, a 10-minute presentation, and a case study explaining the entire design process.

What is Gather-in?

Gather-in is a platform that hosts online meetings. But it is not like any other video conference. Because at gather-in you don’t only listen, you become part of the conversation. You don’t only see, but you are seen. You don’t feel stuck in front of the computer because it feels like a real night out with friends.

As a user, you can

  • choose an online place to hang out,

  • catch up with friends,

  • find new ones,

  • meet the celebrities you like,

  • expand your network,

  • learn new things, and

  • have fun together.

Or that was the case up to now. Because recently the founders decided to take gather-in to the next level. Their new mission is to be the world's first social media for real online places. To achieve this, they need more places. This is how they decided to offer users the opportunity to open up their own places inside the platform. This way gather-in users can build a community of regulars and even start making money.

My challenge was to

Re-create the “invite and share flow” of this new player, the place owner.

But there were other challenges too.

UX design courses equip us students with many different tools. That’s to say, under normal circumstances, I could easily keep myself busy between Friday evening when they announced the challenge, and the stakeholder interview on Tuesday.

For instance, I could immediately dive into the platform, examine the whole interface, do a quick Heuristic Analysis, a Secondary Research, and of course, I could thoroughly check out the competitors.

But I was under exceptional circumstances:

  1. The platform was completely closed to the outside world until the relaunch. (In fact, it was opened in taster mode on the 9th of January 2023, exactly one month after my presentation. I know it because it was yesterday and I was there :)

  2. To keep up with the re-launch, the developer team was making changes every day in the system, sometimes every hour, making it truly hard for me to examine and understand the interface.

  3. They were opening the platform only for special events but there weren’t any on the horizon.

  4. And most importantly, there were not any users to talk to. Because my users were the owners and there were not any place owners on the platform yet.

On the other hand, everything was going so well that I felt incredibly lucky :)

Thanks to the whole team at the Gather-in,

  • I had access to all design files on Figma.

  • From day one, I was invited to the Slack channel. This way I was notified about the daily work lists, every single change in the interface, and all random meetings.

  • I was granted owner features! As if I was waiting for this day all my life, I quickly opened my own place: A tavern called Rakı'n Roll. Of course, only for research purposes.

  • And guess what, I was invited to all internal meetings, every day!

This way I could have a deep understanding of the daily challenges, timelines, bugs, disagreements, priorities, and most importantly I had the chance to observe how UX designers, developers, marketing teams, and stakeholders work together for a single goal even with different motivations at first hand.

My imaginary place might be fake and temporary, but still, I couldn’t help myself not to come up with a (Adobe-Illustrator-free-template) logo and an original slogan.

The research:

Gather-in had hired a research company recently to conduct a perception survey. I started my research by digging deeper into this comprehensive report. Yes, my users were the owners whereas this survey was conducted with platform users, but I kept reading anyway because maybe, and “very possibly”, some of these users would be soon opening their own places.

After that, I started stakeholder interviews. My initial plan was to talk only with product designer Zeynep and co-founder Tan. Eventually, I managed to add the backend developer, digital marketing assistant, and creative producer to this duo and ended up interviewing five stakeholders in total. Cool, init? But how did I manage that? I was very curious, I was very eager, and since the whole Gather-in team was also trying to solve the same challenge they gave me at that moment, I was apparently asking the right questions, and giving the right impression of the person that was really intent on solving the problem.

Now came the most crucial part of the research: User interviews. But as I mentioned before, since the platform was closed and no place would be open until January 9th, I had no owners to interview. That wasn’t only me, at that moment Gather-in did not have any place owners too.

But still, I ended up making five perfect and super insightful interviews. It just took a little bit of strategic problem-solving and critical thinking.

Here is the story: In one of the meetings I met Levent. He had just been hired as a creative producer and his job was to find place owners and introduce them to the platform. He was also the owner of Launch Club, which was open every day from 12 to 16 pm only for the Gather-in team. See, I found my first owner to interview! For those of you who will say "no, that doesn't count because he is one of the staff, that would create a bias", I would like to remind you that Levent started working for Gather-in only a week ago.

The most important question in my interview with Levent was the criteria he considered when choosing the owners. First of all, these people had to have the prerequisites of being Gather-in users. The research I read was a very good source for this.

Here is the Gather-in user profile in a nutshell:

  • 25-40 years old

  • Mostly living in the city

  • Living abroad or somehow having friends or family living abroad

  • Intellectual, cultured, open-minded people

  • It's a good crowd to talk to

  • People who like to try new things

  • Non-judgmental & humanist who knows how to listen to, and understand

+ the qualities that the owners should have:

Eventually, any user could be the owner of their places at Gather-in, but throughout the launch period, they wanted to prioritize successful online business owners and semi-celebrities who have a good size of followers on social media.

Levent, the creative producer already fit the criteria with over 50K followers on Youtube. I decided to find the rest from my own circle of friends and conducted hour-long interviews with a musician, a cacaoista, a comedian, and a fitness coach with followers ranging from 744 to 844K.

“Maybe one day I can be a user” experience research:

Things were going a lil’ bit differently than standard user experience research. That’s why I called the key qualitative learnings “potential” place owner insights.

Persona:

Now it was time to create the persona that represented the collective attributes of my five interviewees. I wanted him to be a professional comedian for a reason. In fact, for two reasons:

  1. I knew Gather-in was also interested in comedians as potential place owners.

  2. One of the users I interviewed was also a comedian - a “comedienne” if I may be precise.

Problem statements:

The next step was to create the problem statements, both for the user and the stakeholder.

I made sure they were broad enough for creative freedom and narrow enough to give me a specific purpose during the design process.

Ideation and lo-fi wireframes:

The ideation step never happens for me in the exact order they teach us in Ironhack. How can that be? I've been a copywriter forever, and the creative process is no longer a switch I can turn on or off, it's part of my DNA.

So by the time I got to this point, my notebook was full of ideas, big and small, and many of them had already been reviewed and revised throughout each step of the research. I immediately started lo-fi sketches to see if what looked great on paper would also work in design.

Here are the ideas that qualified for lo-fi sketches:

  • I introduced the idea of the owners inviting people to their places (before, there was only the option of invitations to the table).

  • I also introduced two main categories: an invitation from outside and from inside - from Gather-in.

  • I divided the invitation from Gather-in into three parts: Invite your friends, invite the regulars, and invite everyone else.

  • And lastly, I created a brand-new “live stats” dashboard where the owners can see the current situation in their places.

Mid-fi and the usability test:

After mid-fi, it was time to do a more thorough user test. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t test with the real owners, but this time I made sure everyone was a Gather-in regular. I asked them to focus only on the functional features without diving into the visual design.

The glow and grow points were as follows:

  • From the perspective of a gather-in user, they grasped how the owner dashboard worked without guidance.

  • The interface was found quite clear and straightforward.

  • They were a bit confused at first about the features they saw for the first time: Invite to my place and live stats. But at the next click, there was this aha moment and it was all clear again.

  • Considering that the owners will be using this dashboard quite often, a learning curve is inevitable. But the fact even in these initial tests, a problem resolving in the next click was pretty assuring.

As expected, it wasn’t all rainbows, unicorns, and butterflies.

The icon I designed for Invite to my place / Invite to Gather-in feature was found similar to Linkedin's logo (I just wanted to use the "in" of Gather-in).

Then I decided to use the "g" of Gather-in during the mid-fi stage, but this time a user said it looked like the Google logo.

Also, the icon I made for “inviting to the stage” was confused with the microphone icon for the sound settings on the platform.

And finally the hi-fi prototype:

Some final words:

So what's next? The user experience team at Gather-in is also working on this problem. The next step would be my favourite: Collaborating! Putting it all together, and combining the ideas.

If I were to continue with this flow, I would quickly complete the other features, such as owner settings, table settings, and all the messages that will be sent to friends, regulars, and other Gather-in people when we invite them to the place.

And last but not least, dear gather-in, thank you for gathering me in! I wouldn't think of a better project for my final challenge in Ironhack.

What did they say?

  • Super professional as always. Love the presentation design. You present super clearly and look at all the audience. I can see how hard you work and how meticulous you are following the process. All your decisions make a lot of sense. The final design is great! I also love how you always add your copywriter personal touch <3

    Carla Vives
    Graphic designer & UX/UI designer

  • Like always, full of energy, very smiley. You’re a great orator!! Also the pitch about the company and the specificity of their new feature was well-made, so easy to understand.

    Djimaly-Eva Sané
    UX/UI designer

  • Good energy. Efficient presentation in so far as Ayca supports every word with an accurate story-telling. We understand the design decision, the solution was designed and sharpened to match the real stakeholders needs (ex : the two buttons). Feels like you are part of the team for the coming days!

    Léa Beaulieu
    Financial controller,
    UX/UI designer & Web developper