5 MIN READ
TEST
Built a 0->1 product in a two-week design sprint that saved >10L in the first month of operation!
MY ROLE
DESIGNER
DURATION
4 months
TEAM
3
Project Overview
The objective for Last Journey to Mars was to create a visually stunning and scientifically accurate portrayal of a manned mission to Mars. The goal was to immerse audiences in the perilous journey and the alien landscapes of the Red Planet.
The Initial Challenge
Ever wanted to play tennis, but your friends were busy or just weren’t interested — leaving you to cancel plans and sit lonely at home?
That moment — when you’re excited to go out but your plans fall apart — is more common than we think.
In urban life, people crave shared experiences: playing sports, attending open mics, or exploring food walks. But most plans die at the same point:
Friends are busy
Group coordination is messy
You don't want to go alone
And so... you stay home
We wanted to solve that.
Discovery: Listening to Users
We began with:
📊 A survey with 100+ responses across college students, working professionals, and solo hobbyists
🎤 20+ deep interviews to unpack planning behaviors and emotional blockers
💡 User Needs
Discover interesting plans happening near them
Match with people based on activity intent, not bio
Low-pressure environment — not chat-first, but plan-first
Freedom to host and join easily
The Initial Challenge yeyasejlasdjkladsjkldakls
Ever wanted to play tennis, but your friends were busy or just weren’t interested — leaving you to cancel plans and sit lonely at home?
That moment — when you’re excited to go out but your plans fall apart — is more common than we think.
In urban life, people crave shared experiences: playing sports, attending open mics, or exploring food walks. But most plans die at the same point:
Friends are busy
Group coordination is messy
You don't want to go alone
And so... you stay home
We wanted to solve that.
That moment — when you’re excited to go out but your plans fall apart — is more common than we think.
In urban life, people crave shared experiences: playing sports, attending open mics, or exploring food walks. But most plans die at the same point:
Friends are busy
Group coordination is messy
You don't want to go alone
And so... you stay home
We wanted to solve that.
DEFINING
We started with sketching out the user journey right when they face the issue outling all the touch points as A. Host, and B. Attendee
We then created an IA outlining all touch points of the app.
"My design philosophy for was centered on creating a visually stunning yet scientifically accurate depiction of space exploration. Each design element was crafted to contribute to a cohesive and believable narrative."
DESIGN
We decided to go with minimal friction where users are just asked to fill their interests and they dive right into the explore section skipping the hassle of creating a profile before interacting with the app.
A user would be prompted to Create a profile right when they try to right swipe (join) an event.
Following were the designs for various main screens including a "You matched" screen that appeared right when your request is accepted
ANALYTICS
We used various tools to capture errors, click events and get data on various metrics and parameters
Me in Dev role 🫢
Orignially being from a technical background, I was well versed with basic framework and languages like HTML, CSS, JS and Python.
After finishing up with design and QCs, I had time on my plate so I though of trying out joining my devs since GPT had started giving out proper solutions and ways to implement.
I realized understanding like 50% of the code was enough and it enabled me to implement:
Creating & implementing simpler APIs (Django & React Native)
Fixing design issues in our app
that help devs implement features and ship the product faster. The experience was enriching and alarming making me realize that this might be the new norm
ITERATE. ITERATE. ITERATE. 🫢
*1
Frequent Account Deletion by Females
We observed the problem and decided to act upon it. We created a focus group of 8 girls of varying from our circles and probe into the problems and feedback on the app. The main high level takeaway was: User Profiles matter a lot. So we quickly re-iterated to include multiple pictures, mandatory profile pic and optional location, work, profession and instagram handle to build trust among serious users
*2
Low Chat Usage
Our metabase analytics displayed that even though a lot of matches are created, the no. of chats/event were surprisingly below 5 [Even though when the Chat was one of the main tabs on bottom drawer].
We probed into the user journey and realized that the chats even though they were accesible, but had small touchpoints that were very easy to miss. Moreover, there was no unread messages signals nudging the users to open chats. We solved it by:
Opening up the chat directly through "You matched" screen.
Redirection to the chat window upon clicking an event rather than sending the user to event details page
Badges on bottom drawer to prompt users to open unread messages
Implementing this had a drastic effect on the messages/event metric increasing it by a whopping 200%
Metrics
As of now, we had a great success in running the app
