How I Redesigned Clubhouse, the hottest audio conversation app
--
A UX case study
Chaithra. S. M. Jul 13, 2021 . 6 min read
Overview
Clubhouse, the new Android application that has managed to create much hype around its platform which is definitely worth the hype if you’re looking to join or build communities and searching for a more relaxed way to communicate and expand your connections. With all of the buzz around Clubhouse building on social media lately, I was desperate to give it a try and I loved the app except for its navigation and not so user friendly experience. The app certainly provides great features but is difficult to navigate and hard to use.
The Clubhouse team is working hard to get Clubhouse ready for everyone and the app requires some finishing touches and what a great opportunity for a budding UX designer like me to redesign or you can say to design it while it is still being designed..;)
Challenge
Through usability testing, I discovered that many users struggled with navigation within the app to find relevant features and clubs that they wanted to catch sight of. Based on my research findings, I designed some solutions and validated them further with additional usability tests.
Personal Objectives
I had the following goals for this case study:
- Making it easier for users to find the relevant features and incorporating some new features to ease the user experience by improving the app’s UI.
- Took up various roles involved in designing a product such as: User Researcher, UX/UI designer, Product Designer.
Demographics of Clubhouse
Clubhouse was initially targeted to high-profile industry “elites,” but now it is open for general public. The study found that 56% of Clubhouse users are age 18–34, 42% are age 35–54, 2% are age 55+.[1]
Online Survey
The survey asked users questions about the apps look and feel and overall experiences.
User Research
To test the app’s user experience, I conducted the user research virtually as covid has made everyone stay in their rooms. Interestingly, I conducted user research in the Clubhouse app itself which was convenient to understand the users while using the app with them. Well, I bagged some honest reviews.
I asked them to navigate through the app and perform a few tasks, such as,
- create a room/ a open room
- go back to home page/ hallway
- close the room
- go to profile
- check the upcoming events of the clubs you follow
Out of 11 people, 11 were able to create a room. There was no option to lock the room if created a open room, that frustrated the users. Nobody was able to check the upcoming events of the clubs they follow, instead found many irrelevant club’s event dates. It was clear that users faced difficulty in understanding the app, its features and how to use it. I analyzed using Affinity map and noted down the pain points.
Analysis
Affinity Map
An affinity mapping is used for organizing related facts into distinct clusters. I used it to distill and prioritize findings from user research.
Pain Points
The major pain points were
- Unable to lock the room after creating a open room
- Showing irrelevant groups/clubs on homepage
- Lack of clarity between different features
- not able to find the upcoming events of the clubs they follow
User Persona
I created a user persona based on the user interviews to empathise with my Clubhouse’s target user and visualize various aspects of their behavior and motivations.
On to the Redesign
UX Challenges: Restructuring the current Information Architecture
I focused on the major issues like the discoverability of relevant clubs in the hallway and locking the rooms after creating the open rooms and found out the user flow and tried my best to simplify the task and reduce the friction between the user and the product.
Ideation and Wire framing
I gazed at other social media apps and made observations on which layouts worked best. I traced out early wireframes of different layouts before committing to high fidelity designs using Adobe XD.
UX suggestions and Redesign
I made some changes in the final product by working on the app’s visibility after testing the above wireframes.
Experience 1: The Hallway
The current app shows the clubs that are not relevant to the user. Hence, redesigned in a way that it filters out according to the user’s interest and relevance.
Experience 2: Providing clarity between features
Experience 3: Clubroom
One of the major issues user’s experienced was unable to lock the room. When a user creates a room and makes it a public room, after getting a specific number of audience they want to lock the room and some user’s want to change the room name. This particular feature doesn’t exist in the current clubhouse app. So, I introduced this feature in my redesign.
Experience 4: Upcoming Events
Experience 5: New Event page
I Changed the title ‘New Event’ to ‘Organize an Event’ to provide more clarity to the users.
Experience 6: My Profile
Functional Prototype
I created a final high fidelity prototype using Adobe XD.
Play with the prototype here.
Validation Testing
To validate the changes I made, I surveyed users with my prototype. I asked the same questions from my initial tests and recorded their feedback.
People loved the lock room feature. Users reaction to finding clubs of interests and able to filter out irrelevant clubs was blissful, and also very convenient. Navigation was made easy and users loved the design.
Retrospective
Being my first mobile redesign, I incorporated lessons learned from workshops, reading blogs and from working but still found myself unprepared for a lot of challenges I faced while researching and designing. The thoughts and ideas in my head still do not transfer to design completely but its always exciting learning how to pivot. In future case studies, I hope to further develop my design skills and be able to identify edge cases more quickly, design with more clarity, and have more of a personnel style. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed doing this project.
Working on this project frequently reminded me of the adage:
“Have no fear of perfection — you’ll never reach it” — Salvador Dali
But I hope to reach it one day.
Be sure to 👏🏽 below and leave comments and suggestions. If you think I did something well or something I can improve on, I would love to discuss it in the comments. Thank you for reading!
