Crotchety is a versatile B2B community app designed to foster connections among professionals and enthusiasts across a wide range of industries. Whether you’re an artist, consultant, hobbyist, gamer, traveler, or foodie, Crotchety empowers you to build vibrant communities, share resources, and communicate seamlessly. The platform offers robust features including skill matching, social posts, private and group chats, job postings, and targeted advertising, making it an essential tool for both businesses and individuals looking to expand their networks and engage with like-minded peers.
Crotchety UX Case Study
Context
Overview
My Role
- Site Architecture
- User Flow
- Visual Design
- Motion Exploration
Platform
- Mobile App
Year
- 2023
Challenges
Creating a platform that caters to diverse communities posed several challenges. We needed to design an intuitive user interface that could accommodate the unique needs of various industries while ensuring ease of use. Another challenge was integrating powerful search and match functionalities that help users find people with specific skill sets and connect with them effectively. Additionally, implementing a secure and efficient messaging system for private and group communications, alongside an advertising module that seamlessly fits into the user experience, required meticulous planning and execution.
Solutions
To address these challenges, we developed a clean and adaptive user interface that can be easily customized for different community types. We integrated advanced algorithms to enhance the skill matching process, ensuring users can quickly find and connect with relevant individuals or job opportunities. For communication, we implemented a robust chat system that supports both private and group interactions, ensuring secure and reliable messaging. The advertising module was designed to be unobtrusive yet effective, allowing for targeted ads that provide value without disrupting the user experience. Through user-centric design and continuous feedback, Crotchety successfully delivers a comprehensive community-building platform that meets the diverse needs of its users.
1. Intuitive Navigation and User Interface
Simplify the user experience with an intuitive navigation system and a clean, modern UI. By prioritizing ease of use, we ensure that users from various industries can quickly find and utilize key features such as skill matching, job postings, and communication tools.
Decrease: User drop-off rate, navigation errors.
Increase: User engagement, task completion rate.
2. Robust Communication Tools
Develop secure and reliable messaging systems, including private and group chats. These tools will support seamless communication for job opportunities, community discussions, and resource sharing, fostering stronger connections and collaborations.
Decrease: Communication delays, message failure rate.
Increase: Message response rate, user interactions.
3. Skill-Based Search Functionality
Enable users to search for individuals with specific skill sets, making it easy to find and contact the right people for jobs, gigs, or collaborations. This feature enhances networking opportunities and resource accessibility within the community.
Decrease: Search time, irrelevant search results.
Increase: Search success rate, user connections.
4. Geolocation-Based Skill Mapping
Incorporate a map/browse feature to help users find people with desired skills or job opportunities nearby. This geolocation-based tool fosters local networking and supports on-the-ground collaboration, benefiting users who prefer or require face-to-face interaction.
Decrease: Search effort, missed local opportunities.
Increase: Local engagements, job/gig matches.
The Process
1. Research
2. Ideate
3. Design
4. Prototype
1. Research
Our research phase involved comprehensive market analysis and user interviews to understand the unique needs of various industries. We conducted surveys and focus groups with potential users from different sectors such as eCommerce, consulting, gaming, and more. This helped us identify key pain points and desired features, ensuring that Crotchety would be a well-rounded, user-friendly platform capable of supporting diverse communities.
2. Ideate
Based on our research insights, we brainstormed and conceptualized features that would best serve our users. We prioritized functionality like skill matching, social interactions, job postings, and secure communication channels. Collaborative ideation sessions with stakeholders and potential users helped us refine these ideas, ensuring that the app would be both comprehensive and intuitive.
3. Design
In the design phase, we developed high-fidelity mockups that brought Crotchety to life. We focused on creating a clean, modern aesthetic that would appeal to a broad user base while ensuring functionality remained intuitive. Design elements were chosen to enhance user engagement and satisfaction, with a consistent visual language that supports seamless interaction across different devices and user scenarios.
4. Prototype
We built interactive prototypes to simulate the user experience and gather actionable feedback. These prototypes allowed us to test the flow and usability of the app, making adjustments based on user interactions and feedback. This iterative process ensured that all features worked harmoniously and that the overall user experience was smooth and efficient.
Summary
The development of Crotchety involved meticulous research, thoughtful ideation, and iterative design processes to create a versatile community-building platform. From ideas to prototypes, each step was informed by user feedback and industry best practices. The result is a robust, user-centric app that caters to the diverse needs of professionals and enthusiasts across various fields, facilitating meaningful connections and streamlined communication.