Unidingo
Mobile, UI/UX Design, Figma
Full-Stack Development, Flutter, Google Cloud, Firebase
Created a student community app that tackles the problem of loneliness and isolation on UK university campuses.
Research
With the target audience being lonely university students, I needed to show that this demographic was large enough, ie. many students need support and would benefit from an app like Unidingo. Here are the results I found:
45%
of students report feeling lonely on a weekly basis
20%
of students do not have any true friends at university
30%
of first-years are concerned about meeting new people
Defining User Needs
Through the research I’ve conducted and by being a student myself and experiencing what it is like to both struggle and successfully make friends, I pinpointed 3 user needs that directly impact campus connectivity:
01 Easily talk to new people
Students, and people in general, often find it difficult to introduce themselves to someone new. Modern social medias do not aid in this difficulty, as messaging someone completely new is often awkward and doesn’t yield the most exciting conversation. This leads us to:
Key Takeaway 1
Users need a way of connecting with new people that is fun, effective and engaging
02 Find like-minded people
It is a commonly known that we get along better with people that share common interests as us. New students tend to connect and make friends with people that share the same hobbies, degrees or backgrounds as themselves - no solution does this effectively. This leads me to my second note:
Key Takeaway 2
Users need a way of finding other students who share the same interests as them
03 See everyone on campus
When students join a university, they expect to feel part of a greater community. Currently, they cannot see everyone who is enrolled, and this lack of transparency leads to a further sense of loneliness and isolation. I want to provide students with a way of seeing everybody in their course, year and entire university.
Key Takeaway 3
Users need to see everybody at their university and easily filter through them
Design
After thinking over the key takeaways, the current state of the app and the dynamics that occur in university life, I came up with the following three features that address each key takeaway while sticking with the main theme of the app - being trendy, lively and modern.
Key Takeaway 1
Users need a way of connecting with new people that is fun, effective and engaging
The Meet Screen
Before proposing this new screen, we experimented with a "Meet Widget," displaying three recently active student profiles on the community feed.
These three profiles offered users a limited choice to connect and send a "wave." Despite this, users loved the widget, so we've expanded it to a full screen. The Meet Screen now allows users to easily find new people to connect with!
In-Chat Games
The Meet screen lets students message active users but doesn't ease initial awkwardness. To make first interactions more fun, users can send games to each other. This helps students feel more comfortable, leading to more engaging conversations.
Key Takeaway 2
Users need a way of finding other students who share the same interests as them
Society Integration
UK universities and student unions offer students the chance to join interest-based clubs, called societies. To ensure all UK students can participate, I’ve added a feature allowing any student to create their own society with customizable rules and admins.
The inspiration for these societies comes from the University of Warwick’s system, where presidents and execs host events, and the clan system in Clash of Clans/Clash Royale, where clans are based on chats where execs set membership rules. Users can easily browse, join, or request to join societies.
1) A page where users can see all the societies they've joined and the latest messages in each society's group chat.
2) The society's home page allows users to see other members and lets admins configure settings.
3) A list of all upcoming events hosted by the society, indicating whether a user can join them.
Key Takeaway 3
Users need to see everybody at their university and easily filter through them
The Yearbook
Most UK high schools and colleges provide students with a yearbook annually or at graduation. This simple concept boosts social morale and provides lasting memories. However, universities lack a similar tradition. While you might take photos with friends at graduation or have a cohort photo, these don't have the same impact as a high school yearbook.
That's why I've decided the best feature to address Key Takeaway 3 is a university-wide yearbook. This 2-dimensional, infinitely scrolling grid shows not just your degree cohort or year, but the entire university. You can filter by any category. Users can also add and update a yearbook quote.
Yearbook Awards
Additionally, users can participate in weekly votes for titles like "Joker of the Year," "Big Name on Campus," "Most Likely to Succeed," and more. Winners receive badges on their yearbook and profile, enhancing their university memories and forever being remembered as the winners for that year.
Development
Overview
This app was founded, designed and developed by two people, myself and another co-founder. Over the span of two months:
- We researched the market and found our user’s pain-points
- Ideated the necessary features to address these points
- Designed the UI and intended functionality for the app on Figma
- Developed the app according to the design specification
- Published the app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store
- Marketed the app to university students
Tech Stack
UI/UX:
Figma, Canva
Front-End:
Flutter, Dart
Back-End:
Google Firebase - including Google Auth, Firestore (NoSQL database), Cloud Functions
Version Control:
GitHub
Technical Challenges
This is my second project coded in Flutter with Firebase as the backend, making most of the features straightforward to develop. The code I wrote was much cleaner and more optimized than in my previous projects due to my focused and intentional approach.
The biggest technical challenge was the yearbook. Since I used Firebase, I had to be cautious of the number of reads, especially with 16,000 users. The issue with the yearbook was that it could potentially call every single user from the university, resulting in up to 3,000 reads in one click, which is costly for a small startup.
The key to solving this was pagination. While other areas of the app already had pagination, the challenge with the yearbook was its 2D scrolling. Pagination is simple with 1D scrolling and a fixed order of results. However, with 2D scrolling and no fixed order, loading a portion of the users without querying all of them was tricky.
The optimizations I implemented reduced the number of database reads from 3,000 each time the screen opened to under 30, a 100-fold reduction. Additionally, we wanted the yearbook to be dynamic, placing the user in the middle with their friends close around them, so using a fixed yearbook was not an option.
Conclusion
Where is Unidingo today?
Unidingo is currently on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. It has over 16,000 users and is used in over 50 universities in the UK. The Unidingo website can be found at www.unidingo.com.
What have I learnt?
In this project, I learned that I love building fun, useful, and engaging interfaces. Every step, from ideation to design to implementation, was immensely rewarding.
I also realized the importance of spending time designing your product before developing it. My previous projects were done on a "develop-as-I-go" basis, often wasting time tweaking the code to make it look good. This time, I could focus more on challenging development tasks like the yearbook and in-chat games, rather than on the UI, which ultimately sped up my workflow.
Furthermore, I discovered the value of user feedback and testing. By involving users early in the process, I could make iterative improvements that significantly enhanced the overall user experience. This approach not only improved the final product but also increased user satisfaction and engagement.
