Down is a unique friend-finding app that sets itself apart from other social media and friend-finding applications by prioritizing the facilitation of in-person meetups. With Down, no need to wait on your friends if they are unavailable; if you want to engage in activities like playing pickup basketball or attending a concert, you can create a post on our app, fill out event details, and share it on other users' feeds. Interested individuals can then request to join.

The app had a brief launch in September 2022. During that period, my design team, which had been onboarded in June, was actively involved in a sprint to finalize and launch the product. Our specific tasks involved a website redesign and the creation of marketing design collateral, aiming to effectively communicate Down's value proposition to its target audience of young adults and college students.

45.3% of 18-25 year olds say they struggle sometimes to always in finding people to do their hobbies with.

61.3% of college students feel severely lonely. (1)

16% of post-grads feel lonely and friendless. (2)
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A survey sent out by the Down team was answered by a total of 437 participants between the ages of 18-25 regarding activities they liked to do and how easy it was for them to find people to do the activities with. In addition to secondary research, the latter two statistics were found.

These stats are understandable considering that people move away from their existing friends following these big changes in life. Down’s goal is to bring about new connections for these target audiences. The app focuses on creating small, intimate group hangouts and bringing people with similar interests together and form genuine friendships.
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At the start of my internship, a website already existed for Down. However, with the incoming launch, we were tasked to enhance and update the website to make it not only aesthetic, but captivate new potential users. As the website was a central point of marketing, it was important for us to address certain goals in the redesign:

"Why Down"
With countless friendship and dating apps out there, our team had to make a compelling argument to the users on why they should consider our app as opposed to existing, larger platforms. We had to consider marketing tactics to make ourselves stand out.

Showcasing Our Unique Value
With countless friendship and dating apps in the market, an objective was to highlight our app's distinctive value proposition—facilitating users in discovering small, intimate groups for genuine friendships.

Encouraging App Adoption
‍We wanted to encourage users to download the app and experience its unique offerings firsthand. By extending a compelling invitation, we aimed to encourage widespread adoption and engagement with the platform.  

The design team wanted to get feedback on the new designs to ensure any last-minute design updates that should be added given that the product was to launch soon. Given the time constraints, we were only able to get in touch with three previous survey takers for an informal video chat. We were met with positive responses from the interviewees regarding not only the website redesign, but also support in the product launch!

Overall, the interviewees really liked the color scheme and described the visual layout as engaging and exciting. One participant noted that the buzzwords "hang out" helped differentiate Down from other meet-up applications, as it implied a more casual way of making connections.

However, the excess white space and lack of images were commented on as areas of improvement. Should we get time to go back to redesigning the website, these would be areas of prioritization.

As this was my first experience working for a startup, I found the environment really exciting and loved the passion that the team carried for their product. I also got to spearhead many design initiatives, such as the website redesign. It was a fun opportunity for me to practice my visual skills alongside taking design leadership. I especially enjoyed talking to potential future users of the product, as it gave me a face to those I was designing for and helped me understand their needs and wants better.

I also really enjoyed creating design tools that the team could user following the end of my internship. A short closing project that I took on was creating a Figma page that allowed the social media team to create and download mockups in accordance to their needs. It was a fun way for me to practice communicating a tool to my team and also work on making clear documentation.