Favor Exchange Within Communities

Personas

Scenarios

Scenario 1: Filtering favor requests

Persona: Rebecca

Context:

It’s a Saturday and Rebecca just finished studying in a study lounge near one of the dining halls in UCLA. She doesn’t have anything else to do, but plans to stay in the Lounge for some more time just casually watching shows on her laptop and wait for her friend. It’s almost lunch hour, and Rebecca knows that around this hour, many students who don’t have meal plans would look to “buy a swipe” from others (meaning to pay someone who have meal plans to let them into the dining halls). She wants to know if she can sell some swipes to other students, or get some other opportunities to do someone a favor for money, but she also doesn’t want to go too far from where she is now, just in case her friend comes to find her.

Action:

Rebecca opens the favor exchange app on her phone and enables the app to get access to her current location. Then, she opens her setting, click on the “status” button to change her status to “accepting favor requests”. After that, she adjusts the filter for favor requests. She sets the location filter to “0.5 miles around me” and compensation filter to “$5 or above compensation”. Then, she starts to watch a show and wait for request notifications. After 10 minutes, she receives a notification that says “ John is looking for someone to swipe him into Feast dining hall, willing to pay $5 for the favor.” Rebecca checks the map and sees that John is just 100 feet from the lounge. She clicks to accept the request and headed out to look for John. She was glad that she could just get notified of money-making opportunities by this app.

Scenario 2: Posting a request and getting someone within the community to do you a favor

Persona: Subin, Rebecca

Context:

On Thursday afternoon, Subin finally settles her plan to shoot her short film project on Sunday. She had found most of crews she need, but is still short on one person who can hold the Boom microphone during the shoot. All of Subin’s friends already have plans for Sunday. Also, she, as a new transfer, doesn’t know many people in the school yet. She really doesn’t know who else she can ask. Therefore, she decides to give the favor exchange app a try.

Action:

Subin opens the favor exchange app, selects UCLA community and clicks on “Add favor request” to fill in a request form. She types in a brief description of the favor needed, saying that a production assistant is needed to help hold the Boom microphone on a film set. She also fills in the approximate time to complete the favor (about 5 hours), the date, time and location the film shoot is happening, and the compensation she is willing to give ($20 + credit at the end of the film). After that, she presses “submit” and the request is posted.

Rebecca, who is just casually browsing favor requests later at Thursday night, saw Subin’s request and sees on the map that Subin’s shooting location is within walking distance from her home. Rebecca thinks it is a great deal and film shooting also sounds fun, so she pressed “I’ll take it” to tell Subin that she would like to take the request.

Subin gets a notification that Rebecca wants to take the request. The app is asking Subin to confirm this deal. She clicks in to check Rebecca’s profile to see whether she is a reliable person. She saw some comments posted by students who had bought swipes from Rebecca, saying that she is always on time and never cancels off a taken favor request last minute. Subin then decides that Rebecca is a responsible person and confirms the deal. Then, Subin uses the messaging function to greet Rebecca and tell her more about the film project.

Scenario 3 (Following Scenario 2): Adding someone who have helped you (or who you would like to help) into the "People I Owe" list

Persona: Subin, Rebecca

Context:

(following Scenario 2) The film shoot went well on Sunday. It was even better than Subin had expected. Rebecca not only did her job well, but gave some of her sharp and inspiring opinions on Subin’s film as well. During the break, Subin and Rebecca talked about their experiences at UCLA and found each other very pleasurable to talk to.They both genuinely enjoyed working together and even exchanged their contacts. At the end of the day, Subin paid Rebecca $20 and added her to the film credit as promised. Subin was grateful for Rebecca’s help and wants to be able to help Rebecca in the future whenever she needs.

Action:

Subin clicks into Rebecca’s profile again, and added Rebecca to the “I owe them” list. Several days later, she receives a notification saying “ Someone that you owe now needs a favor!” She clicks the notification and sees a favor request Rebecca has posted, looking for a 4th year Business-Economics major to discuss career path with her. Subin remembers that her roommate fits those two requirements, so she messages Rebecca and tells her about her roommate. Eventually, Subin helped set up a meeting for Rebecca with her roommate, and Rebecca got a lot of useful information about the Biz-econ major.

Wireframes

Here are some screenshoots of the wireframes

Click to See All Interactive Wireframes

Interactive Prototype

Here are some screenshoots of the final interactive prototype. Please click on the button below the screenshots to see the full interactive version!

Click to See Complete Interactive Prototype

Usability Evaluation

A usability test of the latest prototype was conducted, 1 pilot participated in the test and were asked to use the prototype to complete the following 5 tasks.

• To buy a dining hall swipe from someone else
• To post a favor request asking for a potential interviewee
• To use the filter function to find requests near her
• To check who’s in her “I Owe Them” list
• To check the calendar to see the week’s plan

The following findings have emerged from the data:

• The labels of the app are generally clear to understand
• The aesthetics of the app doesn’t interfere with understanding
• Participant easily completed all 5 tasks in a short time

Recommended areas of improvement include:

• Mismatch between page title and label on the icon (fixed)-- the home page was titled “Discover” but the icon for the home page is labeled “Explore”
• Compensation on the offer page was at a position that makes it hard to find-- should move it down to align with location, description, etc. or change text color to a more prominent one.
• The use of red for dates that cannot be selected is confusing -- grey for things that cannot be selected is the norm and my app should probably follow it too.
• It would be more convenient for the calendar to have not only the month view, but day view as well -- sometimes when people take multiple help requests on the same day, it would be hard to present them all in the month view page.

Video

Overall Plan

Week 1: Training & Planning

Week 2-4: reading and summarizing research articles on:
1. How to best incentivize initiation of helping
2. How to promote formation of relationships through back and forth exchange of help
3. How to promote a prosocial mindset (not towards any specific person you helped/ got help from) -- a general tendency to do good for the community

Week 5: Defining new app features + basic wireframes

Week 6: Interactive low fidelity wireframes for new features

Week 7: A/B testings for ambiguous features + make decisions

Week 8: General usability testings

Week 9: High-fidelity prototyping

Week 10: Finishing up High fidelity prototyping & work on presentation materials

Finals Week: Reflect on the important processes, finish abstract of the research paper

Literature Review

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G50bzSEmo3M5xFWKbElEDc2QxnYEEYVgPWsHbPz8TVI/edit?usp=sharing