Going Together

Nobody wants to walk into a trivia night alone. This is for the ANU events you’d actually go to if you had someone to go with: browse what’s on, say you’re going, see who else is going, and ask one of them to come with you. If they say yes, you’re both going together — that’s the whole app.

Everything else ANU already runs a calendar for. This one only exists for the part a calendar can’t do: turning “something’s happening” into “someone’s coming with me.”

What good looks like here

Anyone can look around without an account — a course-mates events list shouldn’t be locked behind a signup wall just because the site also does something more social. You only need an account once you’re actually doing something with another person: saying you’re going, showing up in someone else’s attendee list, or asking to go together.

A few calls I made on purpose:

• Asking someone is tied to the event you’re both already going to — there’s no directory of everyone on the site and no general messaging. You can only ask “want to go to this together?”, not “let’s chat,” which keeps the whole thing feeling like a events app with a favour to ask, not a social network that happens to have a calendar in it.
• A profile only ever shows your name, a short bio, and how long you’ve been around. Nothing that would make showing up on an attendee list feel like exposing yourself.
• A no is quiet. If someone declines your ask, it just disappears from your pending list — no notification, no “seen,” nothing to feel bad about.
• Signing up just needs an email and a password, no verification — there’s no way for this prototype to send mail, so treat it as a name tag, not proof of who anyone really is.

The one thing that isn’t a judgement call: whoever you are, logged in or not, the app has to stay usable — readable headings, one per page, alt text on every image, no keyboard traps. That part’s checked automatically, not decided by feel.