We created a progressive web app that helps users cultivate already-existing relationships and build new ones! Our app allows users to have an account with multiple friendships. Each friendship is different, and users can gain experience and level up by doing local activities with their friends, as well as taking quizzes on personal interests. All friends also get to fill out their preferences, and they get tested on your information! If you match on anything, the app suggests specific activities to do together that you both love. Doing quizzes gives the user experience points, and doing shared activities together gives both friends experience.
Users can also customize their characters by purchasing new outfits from the Store. To customize their experience, users can also input their own shared activities if they have their own ideas for fun things to do with their friend!
We realized that a lot of friendships we've made during college have begun to taper off as we all go different directions in our lives. We wanted to reconnect these friendships through an app that matches interests and offers shared experiences to reconnect and reinforce existing relationships.
The User Experience designing portion is the most important aspect. Having a more clear goal / outline in the beginning of the creation process would have been a lot better. We ended up changing a lot of features and made new features to work with our idea and the narrative we wanted to tell for our app.
After the initial whiteboarding and brainstorming, we had a rough idea of what features we wanted to have, and working with mentors helped us solidify the need to tell a story with our demo. Based on this, we created multiple pages, first flowing from the main page that shows the current relationship the user is looking at, and going to shared quizzes to find common activities, and then further to suggest activities. We tried to build the full experience that we would want users to have with our application by adding incentive to get money to buy things in the shop and customize your character.
Designing experiences is difficult: Instead of just pushing features, we were constantly having to think about how we want people to use the app, not just what it does. Lots of storyboarding.
CSS is not something to be taken lightly: At least double the time you’re expecting to spend on just design.
Multiple-Relationship activities: Sometimes entire friend groups want to get together and do something fun! If everyone is on Sprout, we can provide suggestions across multiple relationships
Further customization: While we do offer a basic cosmetics store, having further customization options to express your unique personality like pets, professions, and vehicles!
Commercialization: We want to do everything we can to give back to the local community - hopefully teaming up with them for discounts on particular activities.
Memory Books: If you opt-in, we’ll keep track of all the activities you and your friend log to remind you about years down the line.
Introduce new Friends: Based on your interests and those with similar interests in your area we can begin to introduce potential friends you’d really get along with