Overview
As part of our Capstone at neue fische, our three-person team designed a social event app to simplify planning with friends, family, and partners. Over four weeks we surveyed 106 people, conducted three in-depth interviews, and reviewed three academic studies on group dynamics, communication, and organization. From these insights we created a design system, an analysis framework, and a high-fidelity mobile prototype, documented in a detailed case study. The goal was an intuitive, user-centered solution that reduces coordination friction and turns ideas into shared experiences.
The Problem
Many people struggle to organize social activities—whether spontaneous or recurring. Communication scatters across chats and DMs, plans collapse under conflicting moods and availability, responsibilities stay vague, and coordination defaults to the same few people. Last-minute changes, unclear headcounts, and social pressure to “commit” amplify the friction. As a result, the desire for connection and shared experiences often goes unmet, replacing meaningful time together with frustration and, over time, weaker social ties
and missed opportunities.
Research & Insights
Our research phase combined quantitative, qualitative, and secondary methods. In an online survey with 106 participants, we found that the way social activities are organized strongly depends on the structure of the friend group as well as the age of participants. We distinguished between stable groups (high commitment and clear roles) and unstable groups (low commitment or unclear responsibilities).
The results revealed striking differences. In unstable groups, 81% of respondents said that “who is attending” is the most important piece of information before an event. In stable groups, however, 74% prioritized the content or theme of the event. In addition, participants from large cities rated commitment significantly lower (Ø 3.63) compared to those from small and mid-sized towns (Ø 4.11). Age also proved to be an important factor: while 71.4% of respondents aged 45–54 reported smooth and reliable planning within their circle of friends, only 24.4% of those aged 25–29 said the same.
Our interviews confirmed these patterns and highlighted the most common pain points: delayed or missing replies in group chats, a lack of clarity about what people are interested in, and hesitation when suggesting new ideas. We also observed that responsibility for planning and organization often falls on the same individuals, which creates frustration and decreases motivation across the group.
To complement this, we analyzed three academic studies on group dynamics and decision-making. They demonstrated that traditional voting mechanisms are biased by social influence: early responses disproportionately affect later ones, meaning genuine preferences are rarely expressed. Furthermore, the studies showed that successful group decisions depend less on the final outcome and more on the transparency of the negotiation process, shaped by roles, availabilities, and social dynamics.
These insights directly influenced our design decisions. We deliberately chose not to include voting features. Instead, CloseUp focuses on transparency and collaboration: a shared dashboard, a group calendar, and the display of individual participation and moods. Together, these features make group planning more clear, fair, and enjoyable, while reducing social pressure and giving everyone an equal voice in the process.
Bringing these findings together, we synthesized the data into a representative persona – Lara – to embody the core needs, frustrations, and goals of our target group and to guide the subsequent design process.
The design system
NØDE stands for stylistic clarity and a modern, international appeal.
The Scandinavian-inspired name with its distinctive “ø” evokes design minimalism and reflects the app’s aesthetic. It positions the platform as a future-oriented and fashion-conscious space—selling functional, sustainable designer clothing. As a “node,” it becomes the connecting point for curated fashion, inspiration, and conscious choices.
The final Product
The final UI design of NØDE is bold, clean, and product-focused — placing fashion items at the center of the experience while maintaining a strong, modern visual identity. A clear typographic hierarchy, reduced navigation, and striking use of color help guide the user and establish a confident, high-impact aesthetic.
Throughout the process, the three core design principles defined at the outset — clarity, engagement, and efficiency — proved essential. Clarity shaped the overall structure and visual hierarchy, enabling a layout that feels light, intuitive, and easy
to scan.
Engagement informed the use of dynamic elements like countdowns and 360° product views, which add interactivity without distracting from the core content. Efficiency influenced the navigation flow and content prioritization, ensuring users could explore and discover products quickly and seamlessly.
Together, these principles helped align visual expression with functional needs — resulting in an interface that is both emotionally resonant and effortlessly usable.
Conclusion
The final design demonstrates how visual clarity, functional precision, and strategically applied user insights can be combined to create a coherent digital experience. Structure, typography, and interaction follow a clear hierarchy that supports intuitive navigation. By integrating UX research, prototyping, and a consistent visual language, the interface achieves both brand alignment and usability at a high level. Throughout the project, I strengthened my ability to build structured UI systems and translate user feedback into meaningful design improvements — such as refining category navigation and CTA placement. Tools like Maze helped me better understand how real users interact with design, and how to iterate with purpose.
I also deepened my understanding of how visual hierarchy and microinteractions contribute to orientation, engagement, and emotional resonance. Most importantly, this project reinforced my belief that good design is a conversation: it requires balancing aesthetics, usability, and brand expression in a thoughtful and intentional way.
From Insight to Interface
Based on our self-developed user story, we identified the core needs and expectations of our target audience and formulated our working hypothesis. One key insight: users don’t want to search endlessly — they want to be guided through smart categories, moods, and event-based filters to quickly discover relevant products. Our hypothesis: a fashion app needs to offer more than just functional filters — it should provide orientation, curate brands and trends, and deliver a modern, visually engaging design that both inspires and leads users efficiently to their goals.
Introduction
As part of my UX/UI training at neue fische, I collaborated in a three-person team to design an interactive fashion e-commerce app. The project began with a predefined user story, which we adapted to the fashion context to identify concrete user needs. Based on these insights, we developed a new app concept that guides users intuitively to relevant products through mood-based navigation, collection drops, and event filters. Over the course of two weeks, we built a component-based design system in Figma, created a clickable interface enriched with micro-interactions, and tested it in multiple feedback loops.
Aesthetics
with Function
Orientation
through Inspiration
Building Trust
through Expertise
Headline 1
Anton
Regular (400)
48
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Headline 2
Anton
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Subheadline 2
Inter
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Subheadline 1
Inter
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20
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Label 1
Inter
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Labels 2
Inter
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Label 3
Inter
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Buttons/Button 2
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Buttons/Button 3
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Body/Body 2
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Body/Body 1
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Medium (500)
16
130
%
Role: UX/UI Designer
Type: Graduation concept project
Scope: Research → Concept Development → User Testing → UI Design
Duration: 4 Weeks
Focus: User validation & interaction clarity
Status: Concept validated
Overview
As part of our Capstone at neue fische, our three-person team designed a social event app to simplify planning with friends, family, and partners. Over four weeks we surveyed 106 people, conducted three in-depth interviews, and reviewed three academic studies on group dynamics, communication, and organization.
From these insights we created a design system, an analysis framework, and a high-fidelity mobile prototype, documented in a detailed case study. The goal was an intuitive, user-centered solution that reduces coordination friction and turns ideas into shared experiences.
The Problem
Many people struggle to organize social activities—whether spontaneous or recurring. Communication scatters across chats and DMs, plans collapse under conflicting moods and availability, responsibilities stay vague, and coordination defaults to the same few people. Last-minute changes, unclear headcounts, and social pressure to “commit” amplify the friction. As a result, the desire for connection and shared experiences often goes unmet, replacing meaningful time together with frustration and, over time, weaker social ties
and missed opportunities.
Research & Insights
Our research phase combined quantitative, qualitative, and secondary methods. In an online survey with 106 participants, we found that the way social activities are organized strongly depends on the structure of the friend group as well as the age of participants. We distinguished between stable groups (high commitment and clear roles) and unstable groups (low commitment or unclear responsibilities).
The results revealed striking differences. In unstable groups, 81% of respondents said that “who is attending” is the most important piece of information before an event. In stable groups, however, 74% prioritized the content or theme of the event. In addition, participants from large cities rated commitment significantly lower (Ø 3.63) compared to those from small and mid-sized towns (Ø 4.11). Age also proved to be an important factor: while 71.4% of respondents aged 45–54 reported smooth and reliable planning within their circle of friends, only 24.4% of those aged 25–29 said the same.
Our interviews confirmed these patterns and highlighted the most common pain points: delayed or missing replies in group chats, a lack of clarity about what people are interested in, and hesitation when suggesting new ideas. We also observed that responsibility for planning and organization often falls on the same individuals, which creates frustration and decreases motivation across the group.
To complement this, we analyzed three academic studies on group dynamics and decision-making. They demonstrated that traditional voting mechanisms are biased by social influence: early responses disproportionately affect later ones, meaning genuine preferences are rarely expressed. Furthermore, the studies showed that successful group decisions depend less on the final outcome and more on the transparency of the negotiation process, shaped by roles, availabilities, and social dynamics.
These insights directly influenced our design decisions. We deliberately chose not to include voting features. Instead, CloseUp focuses on transparency and collaboration: a shared dashboard, a group calendar, and the display of individual participation and moods. Together, these features make group planning more clear, fair, and enjoyable, while reducing social pressure and giving everyone an equal voice in the process.
Bringing these findings together, we synthesized the data into a representative persona – Lara – to embody the core needs, frustrations, and goals of our target group and to guide the subsequent design process.
PAIN POINTS
Group chats are messy: replies come late or not at all.
It’s unclear what friends are actually interested in. Responsibility
for organizing events often falls on her, which feels
overwhelming.
NEEDS AND GOALS
A simple way to see who is available and what friends are in the mood for.Less pressure on one person to handle all organization.
A more transparent, collaborative way to plan activities so that group time feels fun again.
LARA (29), BERLIN
Lara lives in Berlin and enjoys spending time with her close circle of friends. She loves discovering new activities but often feels that planning group events is stressful and time-consuming.
“Every time we try to plan something, the chat gets messy and no one really commits. By the time we figure it out, the idea has already lost its spark."
*Stable groups
Questions answered
with the following ratings: Commitment ≥ 4
and Clarity ≥ 4.
*Unstable groups
Questions answered
with the following ratings: Commitment ≤ 2 or
Clarity ≤ 2.
Most important info before a meetup
Who’s attending
81%
*unstable groups
63%
*stable groups
Event details
54%
*unstable groups
74%
*stable groups
3.63 Ø
Big City
4.11 Ø
Small/medium-sized city
Commitment
HOW MIGHT WE - QUESTION
“How might we provide Lara with a seamless and motivating way to organize group activities centrally and reliably, so that planning feels
less like a burden and more like part of the fun?”
Userflow
Building on our research insights and the How Might We question, we translated Lara’s needs into a structured user flow. The goal was to design a seamless experience that reduces the chaos of scattered communication and helps her organize or join events without stress.
The flow begins with onboarding, where Lara sets up her profile and personalizes her dashboard through moods and interests. From there, she can easily discover events – either public ones or private activities her friends are planning. Transparency plays a key role: she immediately sees who is attending, what the event is about, and whether it matches her current mood. If she decides to create her own activity, the process is straightforward:
Lara fills in essential details, selects her friends, and sends invitations either directly through the app or via external links like WhatsApp. Confirmations are instantly visible on the shared dashboard, giving her clarity and reducing the uncertainty that so often causes last-minute cancellations.
By mapping out this flow, we ensured that every step directly addresses the frustrations we uncovered in the research: fewer unanswered messages, less organizational pressure on one person, and more motivation to actually make plans happen. The result is a process that turns planning into a transparent, collaborative, and even enjoyable part of the social experience.
ONBOARDING
Creates a profile and
adds her phone number
Syncs her personal
contact list
Accepts the terms
and conditions
Selects personal
interests
DASHBOARD
CREATE EVENT
Clicks + and creates
a private event
Fills in the
event details
Selects the friends to
send invitations to
Sends the
invitation
Sees that her friend wants
to attend this event
Clicks on her
friend’s event card
Finds an event that matches
her selected mood
Sends an “I’m in”
message
Quickly realizes she would
rather create her own event
Looks for inspiration in her
“saved events” folder
Decides to plan an
event herself
Checks the
calendar
Lara receives confirmation and
returns to the dashboard
Shares the invitation via
WhatsApp with her friend
Wants to send the invitation
as an RSVP link as well
Receives a
confirmation
Finds out she was invited to
attend this event with her friend
Chooses different
moods
Uses the mood filter to
personalize the dashboard
Discovers public and private
events from friends
Mid-fidelity Wireframes
Once the user flow was defined, we translated it into mid-fidelity wireframes to explore the structure, navigation, and interactions of the app. At this stage, the focus was on validating functionality rather than visual design. The wireframes illustrate how users like Lara can discover events based on their mood, check availability in a calendar view, see event details, or create their own activities.
By stripping the interface down to its essentials, we were able to test and refine core features such as event discovery, personalization, invitations, and confirmations. These wireframes also served as a foundation for early usability feedback, ensuring that the app’s structure was intuitive and aligned with the research insights before moving into high-fidelity design.
The Design System
Once the user flow was defined, we translated it into mid-fidelity wireframes to explore the structure, navigation, and interactions of the app. At this stage, the focus was on validating functionality rather than visual design. The wireframes illustrate how users like Lara can discover events based on their mood, check availability in a calendar view, see event details, or create their own activities.
By stripping the interface down to its essentials, we were able to test and refine core features such as event discovery, personalization, invitations, and confirmations. These wireframes also served as a foundation for early usability feedback, ensuring that the app’s structure was intuitive and aligned with the research insights before moving into high-fidelity design.
CloseUp.
CloseUp.
Bin dabei
Bin dabei
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Button
NEUE HAAS
Neue Haas Grotesk is used in uppercase for headlines, highlighted with a colorful underline. This creates a strong, modern look that ensures clarity and gives weight to the content. The distinctive grotesk typeface conveys an urban, confident character that perfectly aligns with a young target audience.
Urbanist
Urbanist is used for body text and explanatory content. Its rounded, open shapes provide high readability while also feeling friendly and approachable. As a calm counterpart to the bold grotesk, it supports clear, straightforward communication within the app.
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ONE
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PRIMARY
TWO
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PRIMARY
THREE
#989393
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JUICY
PINK
#F2B4FA
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FRESH
GREEN
#D7F186
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NEUTRAL
ONE
#717171
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NEUTRAL
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THREE
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NEUTRAL
FIVE
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The Prototype
The final CloseUp screens translate research directly into product decisions: quick relevance, social transparency, and minimal friction when replying. Onboarding is deliberately lightweight via phone number with optional contact sync and a short interest pick that’s sufficient to seed a meaningful “For you” feed without adding hurdles. Discovery offers a dual entry—curated weekly favorites as an inspiration hook and precise Mood/Friends/Date filters for goal-oriented search—while event cards compress what matters at a glance (where, when, tags, price range) and surface social proof (“friends reacted”). In the event detail, the attendee view sits alongside content and logistics so people can judge both the social context and the plan in one pass.
The RSVP path is intentionally two-tap (“Going” or “Maybe”), followed by a clear confirmation and a response back to the organizer, which supports different commitment levels without pressure yet keeps hosts informed. A personal calendar anchors upcoming and tentative plans with friend avatars on days, and a saved list preserves “decide later” choices. Typography, contrast, and touch targets are tuned for mobile accessibility; the restrained black-and-white UI with subtle accents and the friendly mascots keep the experience focused, readable, and distinctive.
Key Learnings
Our core learning is that product shaping should be driven by studies and the survey—and continuously re-aligned with new evidence. The defined target group of 25–29-year-olds living in urban areas set the direction: in big cities, public events are a primary social touchpoint, so an event app is not only appropriate but naturally embedded in their routines. The data consistently highlighted two needs that guided the information architecture: for looser, ad-hoc circles, clarity about “who is attending” is decisive, while for more stable groups, concrete plan details—content, time, place, and cost—carry more weight; in parallel, commitment averages are lower in large cities, which we addressed with a low-friction RSVP including a “Maybe” state, visible social signals, and fast feedback loops for hosts.
The process felt natural precisely because hypotheses were repeatedly checked against findings and folded back into the design—from mid-fi flows to high-fi screens—resulting in an app that directly addresses the needs and pain points of this specific group. In short, evidence-led iteration removed debate, increased execution speed, and produced an interface that feels obvious to its users because it genuinely grows out of their behaviors and context.