UX CASE STUDY > bump!
Bump!
An app revolutionizing the way we manage our personal contacts
Type: Solo project, 2 weeks, ~80 hours of work
The problem
With my final case study at Ironhack, I am addressing an everyday problem which most of us have and which interestingly has not been solved yet.
Let me ask you a question first: how up-to-date are your contacts in your personal address book? Are you happy with the state? I am not! And according to my research, most of us are not happy either.
But before going into the research, let me tell you a short story about Felix.
This is Felix. Today, Felix wants to call his old friend Leo which he did not talk to in a while…
Unfortunately, Leo recently changed his phone number and forgot to tell Felix. So Felix is not able to reach Leo which makes him very frustrated.
Felix is even more frustrated, because this is not the first time that something like this happens. He regularly struggles with outdated contact information.
As said, Felix is not alone with his problem and frustration. My research revealed, that most of us have similar problems and frustrations with managing their huge amount of contacts.
My secondary research about existing contact apps showed, that some apps are trying to address the problem of keeping ever changing contact data up-to-date. But from my point of view, they all try to solve the problem “from the wrong end”. They all handle local contact data and try to keep them up-to-date based on information coming from external sources.
Whatsapp e.g. notices when a mobile number changes but as a user I still have to manually update my contact.
The app Cloze syncs data coming from social networks and emails (e.g. signatures) which is pretty smart but from my point of view a very high technical effort to implement and to keep the implementation running because of so many 3rd party services to look at.
The solution
Isn’t there a better, smarter way to solve the problem? There is! And I am wondering why so far no one had the idea to solve the problem in the way my app “bump!” does.
So, what is Felix’s deepest wish regarding his personal address book?
So, Felix does not want to maintain his address book anymore but it shall auto-update whenever the data of one of his contacts changes.
Sounds like magic?
The solution is pretty straight forward: In short, let’s build a contact network where every person is represented exactly once, maintaining and keeping their own contact data up-to-date at all times. Once this is done, they can connect with others, share the part of their contact data they wish to with others and in return the others will do the same. So if everyone maintains their own contact data properly, everyone on the network could benefit from always up-to-date contact data without the current hassle.
You might have already noticed that this idea is not so new as I claimed above. Career networks like Linkedin or Xing are doing pretty much the same but for a different use case. So what I did was transferring the idea to personal contacts / address book and adding some cool new features for initial onboarding and easily and quickly connecting people with a “bump!”-gesture. This also explains the name of the app. Another important aspect is the so called “contact type” that handles the relashionship I have with my contact and which also predefines the data I am sharing.
Interested to see this in action? Then put yourself into Felix’s shoes and check out my prototype which guides you through the onboarding process triggered from an invitation email from Laura. Remember: it’s a prototype. Not everything is clickable, not every flow is realized. While playing around, also try to add an all new contact using the “bump!”-mode. Do you find it intuitively? Hint: To simulate the “bump!” just click into the screen.
To gain a first impression, you can look at this recorded demo:
Most important screens of my figma prototype:
Final words
After installing “bump!” and connecting with Leo and all his other contacts, Felix’s problem is solved. Without thinking, Felix can now easily get in contact with everyone he is connected with which makes him really happy and gives him peace of mind.
