Hikeland Home
UI/UX design
What Is Hikeland Home?
Hikeland is a safe virtual hangout space, creating possibilities to grow and strengthen relationships. We are trying to change social networking and messaging platforms' semantics by converting real-life metaphors into intangible experiences. It allows users to watch videos and play online games with friends and new connections.
Overview
Home experience is a significant feature for a virtual social networking platform called hikeland. The idea is to provide members space to hangout and form meaningful connections online.
Home experience is exactly what it sounds like. It is your house that you own and can customize. It also gives freedom to invite friends over, talk, watch video content and play games together. The majority of our users (Especially females) find it challenging to meet their partners and friends offline due to social norms and lack of infrastructure. Hikeland home experience is an effort to fill that void online by providing them a platform to have conversations and spend quality time together.
The Story
Hikeland has been a dream project for our CEO and us. His vision was to create a magical world where members can express themselves. We envisioned creating a virtual social network taking inspiration from real life and giving members that power and freedom they might not have in the real world.
Hikeland comes from its parent company Hike, which is a messaging app. Hike has a core user group in tier 2, tier 3 cities in India. Couples and college students were a major part of the user group.
Hikeland was a massive project in terms of planning and execution as it was a virtual world with members in their avatars living in this dreamy world. To start off we focused on our Hike apps user group and rolled out a slice of the whole experience to them. Back then, we were a team of 4 designers, 4 Project managers, and 8-12 developers. The scale of the project was massive, and it consisted of a virtual world with houses, market place, fantasy worlds, cinema, etc. To be honest, we were a little overwhelmed initially as no one had a background in game design. But the significant part was all of us were united, positive, and hungry to create something magical. After weeks of endless brainstorming sessions, initial explorations, cross-app analysis, and user surveys, we decided to roll out few features and see users' reactions. The home experience was one of them, and that's how I became a part of it.
Problem Statement
Design a safe space at hikeland where users feel at home, invite other people, and spend quality time together.
What problem are we solving?
We are trying to bridge the communication gap that happens offline caused due to a lack of infrastructure and social norms in tier 2 and 3 cities in India. Eg, women are not allowed to hangout with friends late evening or at night.
Who are we solving it for?
The idea to create hikeland home was to primarily help young couples and women to own a virtual space where they have the freedom to express themselves. Our focus in terms of geography was tier 2 and 3 cities in India and Bangladesh.
Reviews
