Dare You
Dec 2016 – Feb 2017 • The App to Get You Out of Your Comfort Zone
The Challenge
“Dare You” is a fictional app, I’ve conceptualized & designed for the class “Apps & Applications” in university. We were free to pick any topic we liked, and I chose to tackle the struggles of being too comfortable. I worked on the project on my own.
Problem 🔥
Boredom, Fear, Being too comfortable
Solution 💡
Challenge people to leave their comfort zone with fun dares, increase motivation and accountability through a social network.
The Process
Research, Persona’s & Scenarios
Research on what gets people out of their comfort zones and a benchmark of existing apps & websites helped shape a first vague concept. But to better grasps the needs of potential users, I’ve created three young personas. Young, because I assumed that they are more willing in trying out different things, are more flexible and are more likely to seek out impressionable moments, then somebody who is older and rather seeks stability in their lives. Based on the personas, I wrote 3 different scenarios on how they could interact with the app. This helped me gather different feature ideas listed below.
Feature Ideas
After listing my ideas, I did further research to really form them and discussed first drafts in university. This helped me decide which of the Ideas would help me to create an app that helps people get out of one’s comfort zone’s. Many of the features center around the goal of increasing motivation.
Dares
Each day, the users would receive 3 dares by the app, that would expire by the end of it. The users can choose which they feel comfortable accepting.
Random Rewards
Random Rewards could be discounts that appear after accepting a dare. These could give you an extra incentive to actually do the dare.
Daily Quotes
Daily Quotes could help users take the leap and finally accept the dare
Making it Social
A social feed could enable users to share their success and get inspired. It would enable users to create dares themselves and challenge their peers.
Bucket list
We all have bucket lists. Why not make them public, have others dare you and become your accountability partners. That might just help make it a reality.
Leaderboards
To gamify the process, I included points & leaderboards to further motivate the users.
Design
The hidden Quote & Points
The first thing the user sees, is an icon with a daily quote hidden behind it & the amount of points the user has received. This area doesn’t take up too much space, so that at least 3 dares are visible in the viewport.
The Dare-Overview
The dares are divided up in three different tabs, which enables a quick overview:
New dares by the app & other users
Completed dares
Dares the user created themselves
With a simple swipe, users can easily accept or decline dares. In the nav bar, you always have the possibility to create a new dare.
The Dare-Details
If the user is intrigued by a dare, they can go deeper. The users will discover a visual, with a time limit and a short description. Once the users accepts a dare, the random rewards are revealed, if there are any. At the very bottom, the user can prove they have completed the dare with an image or a quick video, that they share to their feed.
Making it social
Inspired by various social media platforms, there is a feed with different dares that people have finished. Every user has their own profile with quick actions. You can dare and follow the users and additionally get inspired by their bucket lists. The leaderboard, based on the points they receive by other users, reveals your ranking.
The Prototype
Takeaways
Even if not required for a project, do the research
Don’t skip on usability testing’s, even if you don’t have time to adjust the designs
Use Sketch instead of Photoshop, not just because it’s easier to design with, but because you can easily import the designs into Principle (Prototyping Tool) while keeping the layers
Use the opportunity and design for more than just the app, a design for the Apple Watch could have been a nice extension to the app and good practice of reduction to the main functionality
The homepage should have focused solemnly on the dares and I should have used the limited space I had to make all the dares visible
Credits
Icons: Gregor Cresnar, Iconnice, Madebyoliver, Freepick & Yannick from www.flaticon.com
Images: maricargacutan, david__jones, Denis Mihailov, tommerton2010, Jasejc, chairit imjaroen, Petras Gagilas, Bradley Gordon, saksan, Marc Levin, Marcelo Campi, uzi978, eflon, J Kivinen, francois schnell, Antonio Rull, Tetsumo, Mary, Alex El, Andrew Meyer, Ken Hawkins from www.flickr.com