MEMO
Studio Project
Team
4 UX Designers
Year
2025
Duration
5 weeks
Overview
GenZ is going out less. Too many apps, too many decisions, and too much friction turns something that should feel like a reward into a chore.
Our team created MEMO, a social nightlife app that simplifies a night out from idea to the morning after. MEMO makes planning, partying, and remembering easy, the way it should be.
My Role
UX Design: designed key user flows and interactions, focusing on both the bigger picture and the little details
Visual Design: collaboratively designed our logo, branding, and design system
Editing: co-directed and edited promotional video to capture our brand direction and demonstrate how MEMO can be used in context
The Problem
Too many questions, not enough clarity
Too many questions leads to decision fatigue and canceled plans. We don't want to flake, but we don't want to text three different group chats and use four different apps just to have dinner and a drink with more than four people.
Our Solution
MEMO is a social nightlife app that captures the full story of a night out. From planning rides and routes to waking up to a morning recap, it helps young adults stay connected, safe, and in sync.
Planning
Get on the same page—before we get in the uber.
MEMO helps everyone stay in the loop, centralizing key logistical information.
Party
And stay on the same page throughout the night.
With location tracking, vibe checks, and progress bars, guests can feel reassured to truly let go.
Play it back
Relive everything the next morning, and maybee do it again.
Centralize photos, recap
Understanding Our Audience
Survey says: college students and young adults are frustrated about coordination, safety, and memory-making, despite interest in nightlife.
Key Insights
1. Nights out are planned across too many disconnected tools
Most respondents rely on a mix of group chats, maps, rideshare apps, calendars, and social media to coordinate a single night out.
Centralize planning, routing, and coordination into one shared space so groups stay aligned before and during the night.
2. Staying in-sync is just as important as staying safe
Safety and staying connected with friends rated extremely high in importance across respondents, with 75% saying it is a priority.
Prioritize real-time awareness and group visibility, helping users feel secure without constant check-ins or disruptive messages.
3. Users want to remember nights out, but not while they are happening
Respondents showed strong interest in sharing recaps after a night out, but less interest in constant posting in the moment.
A morning recap captures photos, locations, and moments automatically, allowing users to stay present while out.
Competitive Landscape
TimeLeft
Facilitates intentional social connections
Curates intimate, in-person dinners that lower the barrier to meeting new people.
Limited to a single, scheduled experience
Focused on one-off events and lacks support for spontaneous plans.
Extend beyond dinners
Could expand into a full night out, but currently leaves planning to other tools.
Partiful
Simple and social event planning
Makes it a social experience to create and manage event invites with a playful, GenZ-friendly tone.
Stops at the invite
Once the event starts, Partiful offers little support for coordination throughout the event.
Support real-time group experiences
Evolve from static event planning into live coordination.
While both TimeLeft and Partiful support social discovery and planning, neither addresses the fragmented, real-time experience of a night out from start to finish, creating space for MEMO.
User Flow
MEMO is built on how nights actually unfold.
No two nights out are the same, but there are patterns. We created a flow around how nights develop: the pre-festivities planning phase, the part phase, and the next morning debrief. Structuring our flow into these phases helped us organize features, reduce complexity, and turn an abstract and ambitious idea into a clear, buildable product flow.
Low-Fidelity
Rapid, low-stakes iteration helped us quickly understand what does not work, and got us closer to finding what does.
Each testing round revealed where our initial flow broke down, which features felt unnecessary, and where users needed more clarity. We repeatedly returned to our user flow to simplify decision points, model our app in context, and remove friction in moments that should feel easy. This iterative process helped us validate core interactions early and ensured that our final designs were grounded in real user behavior rather than initial ideas.
Testing Insights
Focus Creates Clarity
When we tried to solve too many problems at once, users felt overwhelmed and unsure where to start. Narrowing the scope helped us design fewer, stronger moments.
Familiar mental models reduce cognitive load
By integrating familiar patterns like timelines and recaps, we reduced cognitive load and made MEMO feel intuitive without extra explanation.
The experience does not end at the interface.
Branding and our promotional video helped extend the narrative, reinforcing the emotional value of shared memories beyond the interface.
Final Prototype
These prototypes highlight the core interactions that guide users through a full night out, from first open to next-morning reflection.
Each testing round revealed where our initial flow broke down, which features felt unnecessary, and where users needed more clarity. We repeatedly returned to our user flow to simplify decision points, model our app in context, and remove friction in moments that should feel easy. This iterative process helped us validate core interactions early and ensured that our final designs were grounded in real user behavior rather than initial ideas.
Onboarding
This prototype introduces MEMO’s value quickly while keeping onboarding lightweight.
Testing showed users wanted to get into the experience fast, so we minimized steps and focused on clarity over explanation.
Aligning plans before the night begins
This flow helps groups coordinate timing, routes, and logistics in one shared space. Early tests revealed decision fatigue when too many options were presented, leading us to simplify choices and narrow the scope.
Staying in sync without constant messaging
This interaction supports real-time awareness during the night without overwhelming users. Users preferred passive updates over active coordination, which guided us to design for visibility rather than conversation.
Playing it back, together
This prototype captures key moments into a shared morning recap. Testing confirmed that users valued memory-making after the fact, reinforcing our decision to avoid live documentation during the night.
One more thing
Check out the MEMO trailer
To tie the project together, we modeled how MEMO fits into a real night out, from discovery and pre-game planning to football games and the next-morning recap. Seeing the app in action helped validate its relevance and necessity within an existing social routine. Bringing all the pieces together also showed me what is possible when tackling a complex problem alongside a passionate, collaborative team.
