flock

A social curation app providing summer interns with communities, experiences, and things to do while they live in unfamiliar places.

My Role

Product Design Intern

Duration

June 2024 - August 2024

TOOLS

Figma, FigJam, Adobe Illustrator, Prototyping, User Research, User Testing

Team

Jack O. (CTO)
Saarthak C. (CEO)
Evan L. (Software Engineer)

PROJECT OVERVIEW

We live in a loneliness epidemic. Young adults (ages 18-22) especially, are experiencing decreasing real-life connections as they move for college, study abroad, and begin careers. In the summer, internships and unfamiliar work environments make social connections even harder to maintain.

Founded in 2022, flock is a B2B social networking startup focused on communities and social infrastructure. The startup previously lacked a designer and needed assistance on their beta app designs.

As a Product Design Intern, I worked closely with our CTO and CEO to meet product deadlines and bring our newly established social curation algorithm into reality. I designed the beta app from April to June 2024 and spent the remainder of my internship iterating on beta findings to create a more user-friendly experience, aimed at increasing user retention and satisfaction for future iterations.

OVERVIEW

flock: experiences that matter

[data-wf-bgvideo-fallback-img] { display: none; } @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) { [data-wf-bgvideo-fallback-img] { position: absolute; z-index: -100; display: inline-block; height: 100%; width: 100%; object-fit: cover; } }

🔍 DISCOVER

Uncover your city's experiences, communities, and places to inspire your next event.

💫 GET EXCITED

View and access your experiences, communities, and saved items all in the flock dashboard.

🧭 EXPLORE

Easily switch locations between the top summer intern cities in the U.S.

INTRODUCTION

What is flock?

Current social connection platforms are ineffective. 1 in 3 people turn to dating apps to create new connections, but these apps often evoke a sense of lost control, lack of trust, social stigma, and problematic gender dynamics. Many student interns use these apps to make new connections over the summer, but it's often not sustainable. As a founding team, we’ve all experienced the challenge of unfamiliarity and the struggle to form meaningful connections. This was the core inspiration behind flock.
‍
flock is a platform that curates social experiences (events) and communities (affinity/interest groups). Summer interns in major cities sign up, noting their interests, and use flock as a tool to explore or organize events and groups, helping them make new connections.

INTRODUCTION

From MVP to Post-Beta

With flock's pivot to a Business-to-Business (B2B) model, here is a timeline visualizing flock and how our product has evolved these past few years. In the Summer of 2023 we tested our MVP and were able to engage with 450+ student interns in 161 unique locations. This motivated our pivot to a social curation platform for our Beta App Launch in the App Store, in which I derived insights from to guide the redesign process.

Our Social Curation Focus is Driven by 2 Key Findings

(based off ~100 conversational interviews)

of students found 1-on-1 meetups awkward

of students prefer connections built on shared interests

INTRODUCTION

Project Timeline and Process

The design process was influenced by our company's key milestones of our beta app launch and preparing for live product demos.

RESEARCH

Challenges in flock's Design

flock's beta version was released in July 2024 and gained around 1,000 users. Our team found it essential to address pain points and product features early on for future iterations. We identified several design inconsistencies and missing features that users wanted to see in upcoming versions.

RESEARCH

Understanding the Market

To understand the market, I conducted a comprehensive analysis of our direct and indirect competitors by comparing key screens and user flows across popular platforms like Bumble For Friends and Meetup. This allowed me to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities within the existing landscape, which informed the design decisions for our own product.

RESEARCH

User Interviews

In our initial user testing phase, we conducted interviews with 8 early beta users of the flock app, identifying critical usability issues. These insights informed subsequent design revisions to enhance user experience and feature accessibility. We identified 3 key pain points:

Users aren’t very engaged between the main content.

Users struggle to locate registered and saved content.

Users want some form of guidance and inspiration.

IDEATE

Starting with the Foundation

In light of the insights gathered during testing, we identified issues with the display of our two main features, "Experiences" and "Communities," as well as the failure to effectively convey the purpose of our "Explore Places" feature. Thus, this case study focuses more on improving the display of these features. I began by revising our information architecture, expanding the navigation from a four-tab to a five-tab system to:

Make it easier for users to explore experiences, communities, and places. All in one place.

Provide a page to track all experiences, communities, and favorited items.

Avoid the confusion of where to locate friend requests and changes like time or location updates to experiences.

Allow users to access their profile on all pages. This highlights all key functionalities while allowing users to track their activity on flock.

IDEATE

Drafting the Solutions

LOCATION SELECTOR

During beta development, we faced challenges with optimizing the location selector's UI. The previous design took up excessive screen real estate and lacked visual cohesion. This new approach streamlines the location selector, making it more intuitive and seamlessly integrated into the overall interface.

A NEW PAGE: "DISCOVER"

With our main features being tedious to navigate between pages, the new design introduces a more interactive and unified page layout, allowing users to explore all offerings without frequent page changes. This approach not only enhances user engagement, but also ensures our platform feels more populated with content.

A CONVENIENT DASHBOARD

Previously, accessing registered experiences and communities required navigating two different user flows, which created confusion. The new design centralizes all content in one location, aiming to streamline user interaction and enhancing usability.

A REBRAND

Our previous color palette felt restrictive and a bit outdated. Taking a risk, the team and I decided to assign distinct colors to each experience and community tag, complete with corresponding iconography. The goal is for users to intuitively recognize these associations over time.

To balance these colors, we opted for a black and white foundation, which would also help any potential photos and graphics in our experience and community cards to really pop.

COMPARISON

Introducing flock: Post-Beta

FINAL SOLUTIONS

A Reimagined flock

PAIN POINT 01

👥 Disjointed navigation between the "Experiences" and "Communities" tabs reduces user engagement.

COMBINE INTO A "DISCOVER" PAGE

Now, all the content is displayed on the same page! Using a shared horizontal scroll creates a cohesive experience, though it limits visible content. The idea is that users can click 'View All' to explore further on their own. From the Discover Page, users can seamlessly interact with Experiences, Communities, and explore Places.

PAIN POINT 02

📍 Users struggle to locate registered and saved content, leading to frustration.

CENTRALIZED DASHBOARD FOR ALL CONTENT

We improved the user flow for locating content! Previously, the methods for finding Experiences and Communities were inconsistent, leading to confusion. Now, everything is easily accessible in the Dashboard, which also holds favorited Experiences, Communities, and Places, with the option to create personalized curation folders.

PAIN POINT 03

💫 There is a lack of guidance + inspiration, leaving users unsure of how to explore the platform.

A NEW FILTERING SYSTEM

Our new filtering system features in-house curated categories, each represented by distinct colors and symbols. In addition to filtering Experiences and Communities by category, users can now expand their search with neighborhood filters. We've enhanced the design to offer inspiration and guidance, giving users clear starting points for exploration.

FEATURE HIGHLIGHT

Location Selector

Our new location selector had the downside of users potentially not understanding abbreviations of lesser-known cities. Instead of presenting users with abbreviations, we provided the full city names accompanied by corresponding icons. Selecting a city would then display its abbreviation in the selector design, reinforcing the association.

FEATURE HIGHLIGHT

Filter Through Experience and Community Tags

While we have a filter within our search tab, we wanted to make it easier and more engaging for users to explore our content and discover things to do and communities to join. We introduced filter pills with categories curated based on past interviews and popular events with interns. The filters aim to inspire users while also giving them control to tailor their search process to their preferences.

FEATURE HIGHLIGHT

Curate Your Favorites

While flock assists with social curation, we also want to empower our users by giving them the option to keep track of their favorites without feeling overwhelmed by trying to remember them all. For example, as shown, users can create "Curations" of places they like, allowing them to easily reference these spots when planning to host their own experiences in the future.

REFLECTION

The Results

To validate the effectiveness of these design decisions, we tested 8 more app users on their experience with the post-beta iteration.

Doubled screen interactions with our content with the introduction of the "Discover Page".

Improved satisfaction ratings by 25%, with users finding the new design more visually appealing and easier to navigate.

Led the designs of 200+ screens and components between the beta and post-beta designs.

REFLECTION

My Takeaways

Take Risks (With Intention Though!)

Working at a small startup taught me A LOT, but what I remember most from my learnings being able to take risks (with intentionality and purpose) and being able to pivot in a fast-paced and often unpredictable environment. When I first realized that there were much confusion and lack of scalability around our information architecture and branding, I was frustrated that we needed to pivot quite a lot...

But pivoting turned out to be our best decision! Risk is unpredictable, and I'm not saying it will always work out, but in the world of design, embracing calculated risks can open doors to innovation and growth. Sometimes, the willingness to adapt and change direction can lead to new learnings and impactful outcomes.

Design should be Fun, but Also feasible

As flock's 6th employee and first product design intern, I worked closely with our CTO to lead the designs of both the beta launch and the subsequent redesign. I acknowledge that I had much responsibility in these shoes, knowing that the product we released to the public—and the decisions I made—could impact our future endeavors.

With such a responsibility and creative flexibility I was given, it can be difficult to let go of certain design choices. Over the course of the internship, I learned that when balancing all aspects of a product... customer needs, team goals, and tight deadlines, even the best ideas sometimes need to be set aside in favor of practicality and maintaining a seamless user experience. This taught me the importance of having a low-ego and an open mind in design. Design is just one piece of a larger system, and delivering a great product experience often requires compromise and collaboration. It’s not always going to go your way, and that’s okay! :)

Loving flock? View My Other Projects:

Web App Concepts Non-Profit

Miricyl Mind Miles

Web Design Branding

FemaleFounded Conference

Thanks for visiting, it means a lot! Let’s connect.

(Optional) Conversation starter: What’s your favorite dessert?