Part one

Project overview

🎯 Mission

Dive Chat is basically a Groupme alternative that allows for complex interactions like in Discord that is designed for Gen Z!

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Type of product

Mobile Design + Design Strategy

Role

Founding UX/UI Designer

Key responsibilities

Led updates and changes to the design system for Spectrum as well as the Adobe website design system.

❓ Problem

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Business Problem Statement

How can we improve user satisfaction while generating in app revenue?

More of a UX Strategy problem then a typical people problem right? So the first thing I had to do was create a more appropriate problem statement.

People Problem Statement

How might we provide enough value to the user we can generate monetization?

What's the typical answer?

Inspired by military GPS vests, I designed Vestagogo—a Bluetooth-powered wearable that delivers navigational cues through vibration.

Heading

Second Solution (Mid-Fidelity)

To compromise and address both accessibility and brand needs, I proposed an interactive solution where users could toggle the visibility of animations:

Secondary Button: A dedicated button to turn animations on/off.

Toggle: A toggle switch to control dynamic content.

Checkbox: A checkbox where users could consent to seeing dynamic content.

Custom button: the custom button was a “shoot for the stars” custom component that would draw attention to the button.

The first step was to create a user journey map of the current user experience for finding chats and events to attend. .

Preliminary Research

The first step was to meet with several of the different stakeholders like product owners, marketers, current application admins and more. After spending about 2 weeks with 30 minute group interviews, I was able to generate a few research artifacts like the below

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Part two

Ideation

So what are we ideating?

Since users want to see more events, we will make a way to show them advertisements as events. This way companies get advertisements and users get more events

Customer Requirements

Must enable finding events
Must be tailored to the individual user

Advertiser requirements

Must reuse resources they already have
It must embed in what they already have planned.

Solution M - Profit Share Finder

What was it?

A profit share is an agreement that will give part of the proceeds that day to a certain non-profit. It’s a way for the business to get increased traffic at relatively no upfront cost.

The plan was to partner with some restaurants and whenever they were doing a profit share for an organization on Dive Chat, we would automatically generate ads under the agreement we get a small percentage of the profit from the profit share that day.

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How was it for pain points? Was it viable?

Yes, but …It was only viable for the businesses. The C-Suite didn’t like how it felt like we were making people look at ads so it never got to qualify for user testing.

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Solution N - Newsfeed of Ads

What was it?

A Newsfeed of promotional material would be sent to the consumer each time they open the app ( frequency determined by testing )

How was it for pain points?

Was it viable?

A Newsfeed of promotional material would be sent to the consumer each time they open the app ( frequency determined by testing ). But it fails to meet viability since it may take people a long time to learn the system of find specific preferences.

It also required a large amount of businesses that could only be acquired by getting a large amount of ambassadors. A heavy cost for little payoff early on.

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Solution O - Discovery Mode

What was it?

In short, we made an event searching system that let organizations and local businesses share events on the same page.

Kinda like how Google Ad Search results naturally embed into the search feed.

Was it viable?

Yes! In addition to meeting all the requirements of consumers & stakeholders, this design is non-intrusive and additive to the Dive Experience. In The future we plan to promote making events attendance for things like Deals be built into chats.

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Part three

Results

Overview

Once we had 3 solutions to test in mid fidelity, I planned a series of AB tests to be completed using Hotjar. Below are the key findings.

Customer Findings

Consumers would like ads if it meant getting free deals & discounts as they spent a lot of time with ads in view and tapped them often.
Many would use this platform as a means to set up hang outs that center around using a Discovery Event, Group or Deal

Business findings

Businesses have a lot of coupons they need to give out, so hosting it on Dive is a good way to boost their foot traffic
Companies like how this app is a recurring tool unlike other coupon app areas so their is more engagement with their deals

Main findings

A system that focuses on university advertising instead of location based advertising would mitigate most issues.
Discovery needs a more obvious entry point so it feels more a part of the consumer experience

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Initial changes proposed

While several changes were proposed based on the findings, only a few were able to be implemented due to time constraints.

Summary of changes

Location selected via university location
Multiple payment options Variable and Fixed
Discounts for helping in need areas
Rolling the feature out based on locations and population amount
Setting reminders for future events & deals in discover deals
Must include ways to scale past the pair of universities this was initially tested at

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Design Change Summary

Initial changes proposed

While several changes were proposed based on the findings, only a few were able to be implemented due to time constraints.

Summary of changes

Location selected via university location
Multiple payment options Variable and Fixed
Discounts for helping in need areas
Rolling the feature out based on locations and population amount
Setting reminders for future events & deals in discover deals
Must include ways to scale past the pair of universities this was initially tested at

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Second Solution (Mid-Fidelity)

To compromise and address both accessibility and brand needs, I proposed an interactive solution where users could toggle the visibility of animations:

Secondary Button: A dedicated button to turn animations on/off.

Toggle: A toggle switch to control dynamic content.

Checkbox: A checkbox where users could consent to seeing dynamic content.

Custom button: the custom button was a “shoot for the stars” custom component that would draw attention to the button.

Searching

The design was made to be simple, yet effective

Users are able to set custom

Find new deals to try

Find local groups to join

Find local events to try!

Second Solution (Mid-Fidelity)

To compromise and address both accessibility and brand needs, I proposed an interactive solution where users could toggle the visibility of animations:

Secondary Button: A dedicated button to turn animations on/off.

Toggle: A toggle switch to control dynamic content.

Checkbox: A checkbox where users could consent to seeing dynamic content.

Custom button: the custom button was a “shoot for the stars” custom component that would draw attention to the button.

Monetizing with coupons

Now users can view details about coupons for local organizations. They pay to advertise and the users benefit from getting notifications.

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Some benefits include

- Subscribing to notifications of new coupons

- Get deals on the food

- Share it with friends on or off Dive

Second Solution (Mid-Fidelity)

To compromise and address both accessibility and brand needs, I proposed an interactive solution where users could toggle the visibility of animations:

Secondary Button: A dedicated button to turn animations on/off.

Toggle: A toggle switch to control dynamic content.

Checkbox: A checkbox where users could consent to seeing dynamic content.

Custom button: the custom button was a “shoot for the stars” custom component that would draw attention to the button.

Sharing functionality

To make this platform more attractive to stakeholders, we enabled an ability to track how often the events are being shared. That way businesses can see the impact that Dive Chat has on their reach.

🎓Key takeaways

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Ads aren't bad, but how you present information can make it good or bad.

Solving for 2 different users is often needed to spark innovation

What's the typical answer?

Inspired by military GPS vests, I designed Vestagogo—a Bluetooth-powered wearable that delivers navigational cues through vibration.

🏁 Conclusion

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We can say we did successfully solve the pain point because not only did we build more events on the platform by automatically using local businesses to populate it with events, we also helped DiveChat net revenue. To this day, it is the main source of revenue and it made initially made Dive chat $40k monthly and over $500k annually as of 2024 annually.

What's the typical answer?

Inspired by military GPS vests, I designed Vestagogo—a Bluetooth-powered wearable that delivers navigational cues through vibration.

Dive Chat - Monetization

case study

Project overview

🎯 Mission

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❓ Problem

Business Problem Statement

People Problem Statement

What's the typical answer?

Heading

Second Solution (Mid-Fidelity)

Preliminary Research

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Initial Ideas

Ideation

Solution M - Profit Share Finder

Solution N - Newsfeed of Ads

Solution O - Discovery Mode

Results

Overview

Customer Findings

Business findings

Main findings

Initial changes proposed

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Design Change Summary

Initial changes proposed

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Second Solution (Mid-Fidelity)

Searching

Second Solution (Mid-Fidelity)

Monetizing with coupons

Second Solution (Mid-Fidelity)

Sharing functionality

🎓Key takeaways

What's the typical answer?

🏁 Conclusion

What's the typical answer?