University graduates nominated for prestigious UX Design Award

Voting runs until 25 February

Anyone who moves to a new city knows the problem: What can you do at the weekend? And above all: with whom? Nora Schmieder, Vanessa Landow and Max Böttcher were also faced with this question when they came to Bremerhaven for their studies. As part of their bachelor's thesis in the Digital Media Production degree programme, they have now developed the social media app ‘LeMee’, which aims to connect people in real life. The jury of the UX Design Award has nominated this concept for the prestigious design prize in the ‘New Talent’ category. Voting is still open until 25 February at https://ux-design-awards.com/winners/2025-1-lemee.

‘LeMee’ - that's an abbreviation and stands for ‘Let's meet’. This is exactly what the social media event app that Nora Schmieder, Vanessa Landow and Max Böttcher developed for their final thesis is all about. People with similar interests should be able to find each other at private events even if they have never met before. One of the things that inspired the graduates was their experience that socialising in unfamiliar cities can be difficult. "There are many people at university who are new to the city. They then sit together at events and plan joint activities. But it's different in professional life. I went to Hamburg for my internship semester and didn't know anyone there. Everyone else had been living there for a long time and had family and friends. It was difficult for me to get to know new people," says Max Böttcher. But even if you have a new hobby that your circle of friends isn't interested in, the app can help you find like-minded people.

Unlike other social media platforms, ‘LeMee’ has very little space for pictures and videos. Instead, users enter events that they would like to organise or attend. Other people can then take part in these events. "We wanted to differentiate ourselves from other social media platforms and develop an app that is not about self-promotion, but about networking with like-minded people. We want to bring people together," explains Nora Schmieder. This is also one reason why there is little information about the users in the app. People should get to know each other through events, not digitally. In terms of design, the graduates orientated themselves on well-known social media apps so that intuitive use is possible. A survey also showed that filter functions are very popular. "We asked almost 200 people what they would like to see in such an app. Filters where you can set the radius and search by interests were important to many," says Max Böttcher. A prototype of the app has already been successfully subjected to several user tests.

In addition to designing the app, the final project also included a written part. To do this, the graduates looked at well-known social media and compared them with each other. This allowed them to decide together which functions should definitely be included in ‘LeMee’ and which were unnecessary. They also looked at aspects such as marketing and accessibility. "Accessibility is very important in the design. The font and icon sizes have to fit. But the colours are also important so that everything is easy to read," explains Nora Schmieder. During their analysis, they also found out which colour was ideal for ‘LeMee’. "We wanted to use a colour that is not used so often to stand out among the other apps. That's why we decided on purple as the main colour," says Max Böttcher. 

Anyone looking for ‘LeMee’ in the app store will be disappointed: the app is not yet available to download. "Unfortunately, we don't have the financial resources or the programming skills to get “LeMee” up and running. That's why we're looking for investors and programmers to support us," says Nora Schmieder. If they win the UX Design Award, they hope to gain additional publicity for their project. The three graduates already have an idea of how they want to publicise the finished app. "We would like to work together with universities for the launch and advertise in the first issue bags, for example. Then the new students could network with each other via the app instead of in WhatsApp groups," says Vanessa Landow.

Every year, the jury of the UX Design Award honours products with a particularly successful user experience design, i.e. a particularly user-friendly design. In the ‘New Talent’ category, the Bremerhaven graduates are competing against more than 60 other teams from all over the world.

(Translated with the assistance of deepl.com)