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CASE STUDY — 2025
Designing the interface for a mobile app to help people find meaningful friendships
OVERVIEW
Meeting people through dating apps is totally normalized now, so why not meet friends the same way?
After university, I found it surprisingly hard to make new friends. As my interests shifted, old friendships faded, and I struggled to find meaningful connections in everyday life.
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This app was created during my UI Design course. While the focus was on visuals, I wanted to design something personal. An app that could help people, like me, build real friendships!
TIMELINE
Feb 2025-Mar 2025
(6 Weeks)
ROLE
Sole UX/UI Designer
PROJECT TYPE
School Project
PROBLEM
How might we create an app that helps young adults build genuine friendships?
After university, old friends drift away as interests and lifestyles shift, and suddenly, making new friends feels awkward and overwhelming. Even when surrounded by people at work or at a fitness class, it’s hard to find others who truly get you.
So, like many people, I turned to Google: "Friendship apps."
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The top results?
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Bumble For Friends
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Meetup
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Hoop
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While they offered ways to connect, they often felt like extensions of dating apps or large group events. For someone looking for genuine, one-on-one friendship, they didn’t quite hit the mark.
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That’s when I realized: Friendship deserves its own space...separate from dating or networking.
EMPATHIZE
Since this project focused primarily on UI design, the research phase was lighter but I still wanted to hear directly from users.
So, I sent out a short survey and received 17 responses. I wanted to understand people’s experiences with friendship apps and how they approach making new friends as adults.
Survey
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USER SURVEY RESULTS
DEFINE
I analyzed the survey data to pinpoint the main challenges people encounter when making new friends.
Biggest Challenges in Making New Friends:
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Many struggle with starting conversations and finding time to meet new people.
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Friendship apps often feel impersonal, tiring, or too similar to dating apps
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Users want a friendship app that allows personalization based on interests, age, and hobbies to connect with like-minded people.
IDEATE
To kick off the ideation phase, I ran a Crazy 8s workshop to quickly generate a range of concepts. From there, I began sketching key user flows.
Crazy 8s Workshop
CRAZY 8 SKETCHES
Sketches & User Flows
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MAIN PAGES
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PROFILE SET-UP FLOW
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SIGN-UP FLOW
User Flow Diagrams
PROTOTYPE & TEST
After testing a mid-fidelity prototype and gathering user feedback, I iterated on the design to develop a high-fidelity prototype. I then conducted another round of usability testing to validate the refined UI and interactions.
MID-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
User Feedback
USER TEST RESULTS - RAINBOW SPREADSHEET
Style Guide
I created the style guide alongside the high-fidelity prototype to define the visual language early and maintain consistency as the design evolved. It included core elements like typography, colour, and UI components, which helped guide design decisions throughout the process.
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Refined UI & Final Prototype
After testing the mid-fidelity prototype and refining the interaction flow, I created a high-fidelity prototype that addressed the identified usability issues and conducted an unmoderated usability test using Useberry to evaluate the updated UI.
Usability Testing & Design Adjustments
I tested the high-fidelity prototype with five users using Useberry to gather feedback on the design, interactions, and overall user experience. The insights uncovered key usability issues and informed the final refinements to ensure the app felt intuitive and easy to use.
Some participants attempted to open the dropdown by clicking its center, but only the arrow was interactive. To improve usability, I expanded the clickable area to the entire button, increased its size, and added clear text to signal interactivity.
LESSONS LEARNED
This was my first time using Figma, so there was a steep learning curve, especially in such a fast-paced project.
Looking back with more experience, I can now spot some early design oversights. One of the most rewarding parts of this project was the user testing. It helped me get more comfortable setting up different types of usability tests, which I really enjoyed. It was eye-opening to see how something that feels intuitive to a designer can be confusing to users.