PanPalz.
UX research on PanPalz, an early-stage anonymous social app, examining trust in professional conversations and testing calling, messaging, and reporting.
Scope
Client
Duration
Role
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Where the research began
(01)
PanPalz needed to know what would make anonymous conversations worth starting.
PanPalz was an early-stage app for anonymous, one-to-one conversations. Our team first explored demand for Biz, a proposed feature for professional conversations. We looked at what people would want to talk about and what would make them comfortable connecting with someone new.
Later, our team conducted usability testing on a prototype of Friends, a separate feature for meeting people with shared interests, to see how people handled calling, messaging, and reporting a member.
I worked on competitive analysis and interview synthesis, took part in the usability testing, and helped develop the recommendations. The Biz research drew on a two-week survey of 161 people and eight in-depth interviews, and the Friends sessions included four participants.
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What the research revealed
(02)
People valued anonymity but wanted enough context and control to decide whether to connect.
Biz: anonymous career conversations
Biz participants valued staying anonymous at first but wanted control over how much they revealed. Most survey respondents wanted profiles to show someone’s field of work (78%) and job title (77%). Interviewees also wanted ways to judge someone’s credibility before relying on their career advice.
Friends: calling, messaging, and reporting
Friends testing showed a related need for context and control. Each of the four participants encountered at least one issue the team rated as major. Incoming calls gave too little information about the caller. Participants also had trouble finding message history and a way to message before calling. No one found the intended way to report another member. By contrast, participants generally found registration, login, and profile editing straightforward.
Before usability testing, the competitive analysis I worked on and presented recommended easy-to-use reporting tools and visible conversation histories. Testing later found problems in both areas.
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What the research recommended
(03)
The research pointed Biz toward career support rather than workplace venting, and Friends toward clearer ways to connect and report other members.
Biz: anonymous career conversations
Together, the survey and interviews suggested that participants wanted career advice and connection with people in similar situations more than a place to vent about work. Only 28% of respondents (45 of 161) hoped to use anonymous conversations to express frustrations, compared with 73% (118 of 161) who hoped to gain industry insights or advice. Venting also had the lowest comfort score of the four conversation types tested. Interviewees, meanwhile, wanted to connect with people who shared their career path or circumstances.
So we recommended replacing the proposed venting feature with peer support among people facing similar career challenges, separate from mentoring, where participants wanted to know whose advice they were relying on.
Friends: calling, messaging, and reporting
We recommended three changes: include the caller’s profile and scheduling options in call invitations, make message history easier to find, and make the reporting option visible.
A later prototype revised the messaging feature and appeared to remove the option to call someone right away, changes in areas our team had recommended improving. I’d retest the original tasks in that version to see whether those changes addressed the problems participants encountered.
“He took the initiative, was always eager to contribute, and brought valuable perspectives to every team discussion... He has a great way of offering input that pushes the work forward. His adaptability was especially valuable in fast-moving and sometimes challenging environments.”
Rui Tian, UX Researcher, PanPalz (Tech Fleet)
