Lendlife App

Role

UX Researcher & Strategist

Client

Screenwriter & Producer Megan Martin

Timeline

3 Months

Completion

2023

Introduction

To conceptualize the storytelling component of a fictional app, producers collaborate with UX designers to develop a new app concept or user story. In this case study, producer Megan Martin tasked our team to design the fictional app for an upcoming TV series called ‘Lendlife’.

Lendlife allows users to experience the life of a host for a 1-week period. Much like Airbnb and Uber, the app follows a sharing economy business model wherein users can book lived experiences that hosts are willing to share. The final product must enable users to select their Lendlife experience from the mobile app. Meanwhile, hosts can vet interested users and pick out an individual who will live their life for a specific time period.

Role & Activities

Our team’s role was to craft the narrative for the fictional universe, develop user personas, and present the final draft to the client. The goal was to develop the overall brand identity for Lendlife and ensure that it matched with the app’s UX/UI.

Product Concept

Based on the context of the fictional universe, we used this opportunity to shape the narrative of the Lendlife app. We conducted user and market research, brand development and content marketing. Our common goal was to understand potential hosts and users, including their needs, behaviours and factors that would compel them to use the app.

Developing the Brand Identity

If you had a chance to be anyone, who would you be?  What is considered a truly algorithmically correct connection and how do we create chemistry without ever seeing someone else?  With the UX of Lendlife, we aimed to create “digital trust” by creating an app that uses visual communication through AI avatars and identifiers that allow for a level of anonymity — as the first point of communication. We also relied on conceptual visual language versus textual statements to conjure a user or host’s personality within the app.

In terms of visuals, we imagined the Lendlife app would have a futuristic and sci-fi-themed aesthetic. Meanwhile, the Lendlife logo is inspired by windows which represent the user’s ability to get a glimpse of another person’s life.

Opportunity  

Given that living another person’s life is an intimate and personal experience, could we make the booking process safe, fast and easy for hosts and users? 

Based on this problem, we focused on three main features:

Personality Quiz

The personality quiz would enable the Lendlife team to understand the interests and preferences of the user. The answers will determine a user’s Unique Compatibility Score (UCI) with a host.

Unique Compatibility Score (UCI)

The UCI rating is based on the passion points, interests and lifestyle of both hosts and users. It also considers the credibility rating or reviews of each host and the user after booking a Lendlife experience.

Booking Experience

From the user’s standpoint, the booking process allows them to browse from a selection of hosts. They are able to view the host's UCI, profile, experience itinerary and gallery. Once a booking is made, they can chat with the host to learn more about their Lendlife experience.

Our team also created onboarding videos to make it easy for new users to understand the Lendlife experience.

Feature Prioritization

At this stage, we had information about the ideal Lendlife experience from the client, as well as features from popular booking apps. To identity the most prominent features, we classified our proposed features into two categories: least important and most important. Our primary focus was the features on the upper right quadrant - deemed high priority and most important - for ourprototype.

User Flow

Our user flow is designed around our primary persona, the young adult seeking an opportunity to live another person’s life. Users must log in to the mobile app and provide a government ID to verify their identity. From there, they can answer a personality quiz to determine their Unique Compatibility Score (UCI). Next, users can browse the profile of hosts with a high UCI, browse their preferred experiences, and make a booking.

Usability Testing

We conducted three user tests. We interviewed people from three age groups: youth, middle-aged, and adults, to determine their perception of our prototype.   

We put a mobile phone loaded with the prototype in Figma and assessed their initial impressions. 

Here's what we learned:

1. Users want an option to contact Lendlife customer support team for help 

2. They want to learn more about the Lendlife experience during the onboarding process 

3. They want to give users and hosts an option to close the chat even before the one-week time limit is up

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Outcome

We built a high-fidelity prototype focused on two main features—onboarding and booking. We refined our user flows, prototypes and UI based on user testing. To introduce users to the Lendlife experience, we also created onboarding videos.

Our final prototype had the following core features: 

1. Personalized homepage with recommended hosts based on a user’s Unique Compatibility Score  

2. Seamless booking experience featuring the host's profile, experience and gallery photos.  

3. A clear and straightforward onboarding experience and personality quiz  

The design of the branding and final prototype is aligned with the world-building and narrative of producer Megan Martin’s Lendlife.

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Get in touch with me

Shoot me an email at [email protected]

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