Have you ever planned a night out with a close friend, loved one, or significant other, a date night of sorts? How was that experience? Maybe you struggled to sort out the details of a new activity. For peace of mind, you may have opted for dinner instead.
“Date nights are important because they are a break from the normal routine and they relieve stress. Couples are more likely to enjoy higher levels of emotional satisfaction and not take each other for granted if they regularly set aside time to be alone together.”
Amazing Kids
My husband and I have recently neglected our date nights for multiple reasons. Generally, we are extremely busy, we both work from home, and we’re always together. However, we believe it is important to reserve specific time blocks within our schedules to take a break from our routines and spend time bonding with one another. Therefore, an app and service that helps us maintain our date nights without committing any extra time or energy to plan and search for creative experiences would benefit us tremendously.
DateNight App Ideation Exercise
If you haven’t figured it out already, this week I completed an app ideation exercise. Mobile app ideation is the first milestone in the mobile app making journey.
My app ideation activity guided me through developing and building upon an idea for DateNight, an app that assists loved ones with planning and preparing for dates. After creating the general idea for my app, I walked through three ideation techniques to observe and understand the practical aspects of DateNight.
To view my entire exercise, download the PDF below. For now, I’ll walk you through my initial steps, my app use, my Point Of View statement, one of my ideation methods, and my conclusion.
Initial Steps
To start my exercise and develop a general idea for my app, I answered three questions.
Q: What is one app you would love?
A: I would love to have a go-to app for date nights. Regularly planning and scheduling quality time with a partner or significant other can often be neglected. Amongst a busy schedule filled with innumerable obligations, it can be difficult to remain intentional about setting time aside for new experiences alongside loved ones.
Having an app that integrates with your calendar, recommends restaurants and activities based on interests and preferences, and makes reservations and/or bookings for you would help automate the planning and scheduling aspects of a night out.
Q: What will the app do?
A: Incorporating features from Groupon, Yelp, DoorDash, Airbnb Experiences, Meal Kits services, and other apps and services, DateNight would serve as a hub for users to find and book unique experiences, make restaurant reservations, or have at-home activity kits delivered.
DateNight would offer subscription services as well as one-time experience opportunities suitable for two individuals. This app would suggest three different categories to users: Experiences, Dinner Dates, and At-Home Activities.
Users paying monthly to utilize the app would be offered six date night options bi-weekly, two from each category, based on their interests and preferences. Once the user selects their option, the app automatically books or reserves their selection, sends the user day-of details, notifies all participants of the upcoming experience, and marks the booking or reservation on their calendars.
DateNight would serve as a search engine for users seeking one-time experiences. Once these users take interest in a particular activity they have found, they would book, reserve, or purchase the experience or activity themselves.
Q: What purpose will it serve?
A: Whether in the comfort of their homes or out and about, DateNight will support couples and parties of two with scheduling quality time together. It will help find new and creative ways for people to bond with one another, limit redundancy, and maintain joy and excitement in the relationship. A service that helps automate the planning and scheduling aspects of a date night will help relieve stress, keeping the overall experience light, fun, and spontaneous.
App Use
Next, I reviewed some of the applications I utilize regularly and compared them to apps I dislike or do not make use of.
Favored Apps
Most of the apps I use benefit me in one way or another. I may be seeking connection with others, first-hand experiences, reviews, food, products, tools to help me stay structured, or more. Nevertheless, I try to make the most of the time I use on each of these apps, utilizing them mostly to meet my personal needs.
Disfavored Apps
I tend to limit my use of apps that require a lot of my time and attention without meeting my needs or benefitting me directly. With a busy schedule and a lot of responsibilities, beyond a quick trip to Instagram, I prefer not to be whisked away by social media’s black holes.
Point Of View Statement
In User Experience design, a Point Of View (POV) statement” is a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which will allow you to ideate in a goal-oriented manner.” POV statements help pinpoint a direct need that needs to be met. This assists UX professionals in targeting the need and developing a solution. Instead of attempting to juggle many issues at once with their attention divided, UX professionals remain direct, opting to find a solution for one specific problem at a time.
POV statements combine three components – the user, the need, and the insight. A Point Of View statement is formatted in the following manner:
[User . . . (descriptive)] needs [need . . . (verb)] because [insight. . . (compelling)].
My POV Statement
Following is the POV statement I created for the DateNight App. I utilized this statement as a focal point while walking through my ideation techniques.
Users that struggle with scheduling time with loved ones need a simple and creative way to select and plan bonding activities regularly because planning date nights can become stressful and redundant.
Ideation Method
Ideation is a creative process in which design thinkers spark off ideas. It is the third stage in the UX Design Thinking Process. Designers utilize numerous techniques to generate new ideas. One technique I utilized in my app ideation exercise is called Sketch.
Sketch
This visual method involves creating rough sketches of possible solutions to generate ideas. Sketching sparks creativity and innovation, things needed for a successful ideation session. The key to the sketch technique is to refrain from committing a lot of time to well-developed sketches. The sketches should be as simple and rough as possible with just enough detail to convey meaning.
Using an iPhone template, I drafted sketches of three screens within the DateNight app: Personalized Date Feed, Date Categories, and Experience Selection.
Personalized Date Feed
For subscribed users, the date feed will display a few upcoming dates that have already been selected by the user and scheduled through the app. The next date that needs to be selected will be housed at the bottom of this feed.
Date Categories
Once the user opts to plan their next date, the next screen they see will allow them to explore date options for their next date by category: Experiences, Dinner Dates, and At-Home Activities.
Experience Selection
When the user selects a category such as Experiences, they are given two unique Experience options to select from for the week. This limits the selection process so they don’t spend too much time choosing. Each Experience option will have a little bit of a description including the location and the distance so that the user knows what to expect. When the user selects what they would like to do, the app will schedule the event and keep the user notified regarding their upcoming date.
My Exercise Conclusion
After practicing three ideation techniques including Sketch, Storyboard, and Pessimist Vs. Optimist, I concluded that the app ideation activity was a fun and innovative way to develop ideas for an app that could one-day benefit many loved ones, including myself and my husband. Creating sketches and storyboards for DateNight were similar processes. Both of these techniques helped me develop the app idea further, adding more detail and making the idea more realistic and relatable.
On the other hand, the Pessimist Vs. Optimist ideation technique assisted with sorting through my underlying thoughts and concerns about the app. This method helped me determine whether developing an app like this is feasible.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I think DateNight is an app I would make use of regularly. My husband and I have neglected our date nights but an app like DateNight would benefit us as a way to remain consistent and spend time together without committing any extra time or energy to plan and search for creative date experiences.
This activity was a great introduction and crash course to the mobile app-making journey. It also helped me learn more about and practice three specific ideation techniques. Moving forward, I would like to explore DateNight further, as I truly believe that this app could benefit many.
Sola's Thoughts 