Some time in 2021, Dami, my friend who came from Canada to Lagos, Nigeria for holiday wanted to explore Lagos. Prior to her arrival she had asked me to be her “tour guide” during her stay in Lagos. Being an introvert, this was a very difficult task because I literally do not know about fun places in Lagos, Nigeria(I’ve heard of a few though). I was also concerned about how pricey these “island spots” would be. YES! I got nice places, but I was not sure if they had the right menu or if the prices were within our budget. After this experience, I thought of looking for a way to solve this challenge. The name Nèzí which means “outside” in Igbo(A tribe from the eastern part of Nigeria) ****came ****up ****and since then it has stuck with this project.
Cover image for Nèzí
This was a solo project, so I basically did the following: -designing of the app’s logo -UX research(Conducting survey, Users’ interview, Competitive analysis) -UX writing -user-flow diagram -information architecture -sketching -low and high-fidelity prototypes -usability testing.
Apart from the problems I faced getting good spots to hangout with my friend, when I threw an open question to a group of people, I realized that the problems were even more. Users found it difficult to locate good places close to them and they even found it more tasking to select hangout locations due to issues like pricing, and unavailability of available seats for them. During one of the interviews I had, the user said “Google already does that but google doesn’t compare prices”. Then I realized that there were more issues to tackle than I had jotted out.
source: unsplash.com
In Richard Branson’s words “...Solving problems means listening”. So, I first began my design thinking process by listing out possible challenges that other users might face while searching for a good spot to hangout. I also listed out possible solutions to the challenges I listed. Forecasting the challenges assisted in crafting out the user survey questions that was sent across to users.
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Afterwards, a survey was conducted to understand what users felt about finding a good spot and their experiences. To be very clear on the challenges I was going to solve, I then moved a step further by conducting an interview with two users(a male and a female) which influenced the user persona I created. The user persona helped to narrow down the problems to be solved. I recalled during the interview with one of the users, the user asked “have you heard of backdrop by Timi and his colleagues?”. The question led to a widened horizon for competitive audit. I also realized that users do not want to spend too much time when searching for a good spot to hangout even as they want the best. So, I came up with a user flow that will take users 7 steps to find, compare and book good spots. In other words, this solution will help users search for good spots(with search filter), find the spots, compare them and book whilst on the app in 5 minutes or less.
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