GroupUp!

GroupUp is an event planning app that I developed as part of the E-Business course at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, from the initial idea through the concept phase to a fully interactive prototype. The starting point was an observation most people will recognise: group plans rarely fail because nobody wants to meet, they fail because nobody can decide. Someone writes "anyone up for coffee?" in the chat, three people reply "sure, when?", someone suggests a place, two others think it is too expensive, and thirty messages later nothing has been settled. In the end either one person decides alone or nobody does. GroupUp closes exactly this gap by turning the decision itself into the product.

At the heart of the app is a group swipe. Whoever creates an event first selects a category, such as coffee or drinks, eating out, going out, arts and culture, sports, or something outdoors, and then defines the frame: how far the venue may be and how much each person wants to spend. If no specific place has been chosen yet, the app generates matching suggestions on that basis, which all group members swipe through as cards. Each venue shows precisely the information that matters for a quick decision: price range, distance, opening hours, ratings and relevant features such as vegetarian options, wheelchair accessibility or card payment. The venue with the highest approval wins, and the group can see at any time who has already voted and who is still missing.

Finding a date follows the same principle, but in two stages. Instead of having the group vote on specific times right away, which quickly becomes confusing, the person creating the event first proposes possible days and rough time slots (morning, afternoon, evening). Only once a time frame has been agreed on does a second vote determine the actual starting time. Both votes run as pinned elements directly inside the group chat, so that decision making and communication do not happen in separate places.

Beyond planning with a group, the app also has an explore section, a personal inspiration mode in which users browse venues nearby on their own. The suggestions here are drawn entirely from the private preferences, so the places that appear already fit the budget, the radius, the dietary needs and the mobility requirements of that individual user. Venues can be liked or skipped, and everything that has been liked is collected afterwards in a dedicated likes area. The likes are sorted by origin: one tab holds the places saved while exploring, which can later serve as a starting point for a new event, while the other tab holds the places liked inside a specific event.

Events can be created either privately or publicly, and this choice is made during setup. A private plan is visible only to the people who are invited directly. A public plan, by contrast, is visible to everyone in the surrounding area, who can then send a request to join. The organiser sees the event profile of each person requesting to join, with the information that actually matters for meeting up, and can accept or decline the request on that basis. Only after acceptance does the person gain access to the exact venue and to the group chat, so the app stays open to new people without exposing details of the meeting to everyone at once.

This is directly connected to one concept decision that mattered a lot to me: the strict separation between public and private information. The event profile is deliberately reduced and only shows what is genuinely relevant for meeting up, meaning a short bio, interests, languages, dietary preferences and mobility. The private preferences, meaning budget range, radius and preferred times, are visible to nobody and serve exclusively to personalise the suggestions. This separation is also reflected visually: the event profile is designed as a profile, while the private preferences are deliberately presented as a plain settings list. This is what sets GroupUp apart from social and dating apps.

The third guiding principle was that the app should support decisions without forcing them. Anyone who already knows the venue simply enters it and can switch back to suggestions at any point. Anyone who already knows the date skips the vote. The swipe mechanism can be removed entirely. The app is a tool for the common case, not a corset.

The idea, information architecture, user flows, interface design and interactive prototype are entirely my own work. The project was awarded 100 out of 100 points.

In the video below I click through the core flows of the prototype, from setting up a profile and creating an event to deciding on a venue and a time together. If you would like to take a closer look at the individual screens and their connections, you will also find a link to the full Figma project underneath.

Here you can find the Figma projekt.