Hotspot
A Party Management App
Role
Project Lead
UX Design
Leadership
Visual Design
Branding
Skills
Timeline
13 Weeks
Introduction
Hotspot is a nightlife planning app designed to help users find local events, coordinate group outings, and make nights out stress-free. As Project Lead, I guided the full design process, from research and concept development to prototyping and testing. Our goal was to reimagine how young adults discover, plan, and enjoy nightlife with their friends.
Discover
To understand how people plan nights out, the research started with 21 user interviews and a short survey that received 28 responses. I also looked into similar nightlife and social planning apps. The biggest themes that came up? Group chats get chaotic fast, last-minute decisions create stress, and people want to go out somewhere that actually matches their vibe, not just wherever they end up.
Interviews
We interviewed 21 people who go out with friends. Most of them relied on group chats to make plans, which often turned messy or last-minute. A big pain point was that decisions rarely matched everyone’s vibe, some wanted chill nights, while others wanted something high-energy.
“I hate paying cover just to find out it’s not my scene”
“I hate when plans get messy and we end up somewhere we don’t enjoy.”
Survey Findings
Group Decision-Making
Respondents highlighted difficulties in reaching consensus on where to go, often resulting in indecision or fragmented plans.
Location Sharing
Most users were open to sharing their location with friends for the night, as long as it was temporary and fully controlled by the user.
Discovery Methods
Many users rely on word-of-mouth or social media to discover events, but expressed a desire for a more centralized and personalized platform.
Define
Based on our research, we found that planning nights out is often chaotic, group chats get messy, plans change last minute, and events don’t always match the vibe. We saw an opportunity to create a centralized, social, and personalized tool that helps users discover events and coordinate with friends more easily, making planning fun, not frustrating.
Problem Statement
Many Young Adults Struggle with coordinating nightlife plans. This problem is especially common on weekends and in nightlife hotspots due to unorganization
Personas
My Team and I created two personas that reflect our research and findings
How Might We
Help groups of friends coordinate their nights out?
Ideate
In the ideate phase, we took our research insights and turned them into actionable ideas. Through brainstorming sessions, sketches, and feature mapping, we explored creative ways to make nightlife planning feel simple, social, and exciting.
To make sense of our research, we used affinity mapping to group user quotes, observations, and survey responses by theme. This helped us clearly see patterns in user behavior and pain points.
Affinity Diagram
Transparency
Discovery
Communication
Pain Points
Key Features
Live Location Sharing
Let your friends know where you are
Event Transparency
See dress code, venue type and cover charge
Event Polls
Vote on your favourite places in the groupchat
Filters
Set what kind of venues you want to see
Heatmap
See where your friends are and their ETA
Moments
Send photos during your night out and view them after
Hotspot’s user flows focus on making nightlife planning simple and social. Core flows include sharing events, voting on plans, and switching between pre-event and during-event modes. Each flow keeps interactions quick, fun, and group-focused.
User Flows
Share an event with your group and everyone casts a vote. Majority Wins!
Creating a Poll and Voting
Find an event on the discovery feed. Filter options by price, location and venue type and share with your group!
Creating a Night Out
Pre-event mode is a focused module that activates two hours before a scheduled event, limiting user access to just the group chat and event details to keep everyone aligned and minimize distractions.
Pre Event Mode
During-event mode activates once the event starts, giving users access to the group chat, a heatmap showing friends' locations, and a photo feature—capturing memories that are saved forever.
During Event Mode
Design
Paper Prototypes
After I created wireframes, my team and I tested on 2 individuals. The 3 key tasks given were
Testing
Share a venue with a group
Start a poll
Create a new event
After gaining insightful feedback from users, we made the corrections to design the MVP
Feedback
Cut down 50% of screen
Focused more on the MVP
Made the polling feature easier
Too Confusing
Users were too confused with the navigation and felt it should be streamlined
Too Robust
Users felt like the app was attempting to do too much at once
Simpler Polling
Users said when a venue is shared, a simple “yes” or “no” is easier
High-Fidelity Prototype
I was responsible for designing the onboarding experience, which set the tone and visual direction for the rest of the app. The onboarding gives users a quick, engaging overview of what Hotspot offers. It also includes light personalization options to help tailor the experience from the start, making sure users feel like the app fits their nightlife style.
Onboarding
The MVP for Hotspot focused on delivering the core features needed to support a fun and functional nightlife planning experience. This included a personalized onboarding flow, an event discovery screen with filters, a group planning feature with voting, and a live map to see where friends are. These features were chosen to give users the essential tools to find events, coordinate plans, and connect in real-time.
MVP
Outcomes
The final Hotspot prototype received positive feedback from users during testing, especially for its vibrant branding, clear onboarding, and social planning features. Testers found the group voting and live location sharing especially useful for coordinating nights out. Overall, the design successfully captured the energy of the club scene while remaining functional and user-friendly. These results confirmed that the app met its goals of enhancing social nightlife planning in a fun and accessible way.
Lessons Learned
Being in a leadership position came with a lot of responsibility, from supporting the team and making tough decisions to balancing creative input and staying aligned with project goals. At times, I felt pressure to have all the answers, but I learned that good leadership is about adaptability, trust, and open communication. Moving forward, I’d prioritize time management and earlier user testing. This experience helped me grow in collaboration, decision-making, and confidently guiding a team toward a shared vision.