Overview

Civitaz was a project to combat the social isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic by allowing users to see what their friends are doing amongst all online platforms. Regardless if their friends play games on Xbox, Playstation, Nintenedo, PC, or even if they are just hanging out in discord or watching Youtube. This application will also let users schedule events for friends to join. The application also includes the “Discover” tab. This feature allows people to find open communities in order to make new friends or simply just exist in virtual proximity to others.

This app is designed to address a couple core problems:
• The negative impact social distancing has had on user’s social lives.
• The prevalence of too many social apps to know what your friends are doing at any given time.

Research

I had the great opportunity to work with a team of UX researchers who were able to perform a series of user studies in order to identify problems from users. Since we had a short window to complete this project and knew we wouldn’t have a ton of time to make several low-fidelity prototypes before the deadline, being able to draw on their research helped us land on a solid concept much more quickly than simply taking a shotgun approach to user testing.

The methods the team used to conduct research included:

• Empathy mapping.
• User interviews via Discord or in-person.
• User personas.
• Affinity diagrams.
• Contextual inquiries and cognitive walkthroughs.

This was the final prototype I created for the project as the UX Designer. This was created using Adobe XD.