About the Project
In recent years, remote living has gained tremendous momentum worldwide. Today, we can do virtually everything from a distance - shopping, working, making new connections, and socializing with friends. The pandemic era particularly accelerated this shift, with people increasingly relying on delivery services, Google Meet, Zoom, and other digital tools.
Our UK clients approached us with a compelling vision: create an application that helps people find others with similar interests, both personal and professional. During our discovery phase, we faced a crucial question - should we integrate with Google Meet or Zoom to enable online meetups? The answer was crystal clear: we're building an app to help people meet face-to-face, communicate in person, and build their offline communities.
The app welcomes users with an intuitive onboarding process where you share your story, select interests and skills, and indicate your availability. Then, the app works silently in the background, finding people with similar interests and suggesting coffee meetings at cafes in London or any other city where you're located. The name YouInTown? Says it all 🙂
The app's community is its beating heart — the more diverse people use the platform, the better your chances of finding individuals with matching skills and interests. Users can create large group gatherings or engage in one-on-one conversations. Whether it's heading to the nearest pub with fellow fans of your favorite football team or attending a professional conference, every meetup matters. After each encounter, the app asks you to rate the experience — Was your conversation partner pleasant? Was it educational or simply fun? This feedback helps the app learn and suggest increasingly relevant connections.
Interesting Facts
One of our clients lives in Cambridge, a city renowned for its ancient university - one of the oldest in the English-speaking world.
Under the hood, the app uses generative AI to find the most suitable meeting partners, enabling perfect matches through not just rigid algorithms, but flexible comparison of relevant interests.
Thanks to calendar integrations, the app always considers your current availability, ensuring meeting suggestions arrive when you're genuinely free.
Our clients were so engaged in the development process that over 6 months, we conducted 50+ meetings for brainstorming sessions, workshops, and demos. These sessions generated thousands of ideas to make the product better and more user-friendly.
Client Request
The YouInTown team came to us with a clear vision: build a mobile application that would be simple and intuitive for users of all backgrounds. We needed to consider users' interests so the app could suggest genuinely interesting conversation partners. The app shouldn't be time-consuming - everything should happen in the background. We simply suggest where and when users can meet based on their geolocation and availability. You just need to receive a meeting notification, review the details, and confirm or decline. As simple as that.
The key requirements for the final product were:
Calendar Integration - Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook integration. The app should not only consider availability based on existing events but also create new ones for YouInTown meetups, ensuring users don't forget about meetings days later.
Generative AI as the Foundation for user matching. This is critically important because we must account for the fact that Liverpool and Manchester United fans won't be thrilled to gather together at a pub in the evening 🙂
Background Partner Search - We don't force users to spend all their free time on their phones; we want people to live their offline lives more fully.
After our kick-off call where we learned the client's product idea and vision, we were ready to dive headfirst into the app's context and begin our work.
Our Approach
We proposed the following development approach: start with a discovery phase to analyze requirements, understand necessary integrations, and determine the logic needed for various app functionalities. Simultaneously, we launched the design phase, where our business analyst, designer, and clients collaboratively created initial prototypes and screen mockups.
By the end of the discovery phase, we transformed the client's idea into a clear, understandable user flow encompassing all app steps and activities. We conducted numerous workshops and brainstorming sessions to identify critically important flows and agree on implementation approaches.
The design phase proved challenging - we spent considerable time finding the right app look and feel, incorporating UX best practices to make end users want to return and continue using the app. We prepared screens that eventually became a living application ready for real-world use.
Once we received the initial mobile app screens, we were ready to begin development, setting up everything needed for project launch and showing clients the first live screens.
What happens after development? We maintained close contact with the client, understanding that during actual usage, areas requiring improvements inevitably emerge. We always listen to client feedback and provide guarantees on the final product.
Challenges
• AI Configuration for User Matching
During development, we tested dozens of hypotheses to ensure relevant search results. Nobody wants to use an app that constantly suggests meetings with people you have nothing to talk about. Through extensive testing, we created a matching algorithm that will help you meet John on Friday evening - someone who shares your interests.
• Apple Calendar Integration
Our tech stack included React Native for cross-platform Android and iOS compatibility. To integrate Apple Calendar with React Native, we built a custom library from scratch, enabling us to retrieve user calendar events and automatically create meetings. Now iPhone users won't miss YouInTown-suggested meetups.
• Design Challenges
The design phase was among the project's most complex aspects. To find the perfect look and feel for our users, we conducted dozens of meetings and design demos. We experimented with various design approaches and created mood boards, ultimately achieving the desired app aesthetic.
Core Features
Continuous Search for New Meetup Partners This is the app's heart - the application continuously matches you with nearby users in the background, identifying the most relevant meetup partners. It considers your availability and other users' schedules to suggest optimal meeting times and selects venues close to both parties. You receive notifications with clear date, time, location, and brief descriptions of the other person's interests. The system suggests suitable conversation starters.
Meetup Creation Want to organize a discussion about the latest AI model? Or meet fellow fans of your favorite football club? Create a meetup, set your own date and time, choose location and discussion topics. The system automatically finds suitable participants. Simply select someone from the list and send an invitation. Meeting new people has never been easier 🙂
Meetup Adjustment Ever agreed to a meeting but suddenly couldn't attend? Or maybe the app-suggested venue isn't your favorite spot? You can always propose alternative dates, times, or locations. The app helps choose dates and times that still work for other participants or venues convenient for both parties.
Contact Book Add friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and other connections to your contact book for easy meetup invitations. We created segments to separate colleagues from family and friends for better organization.
Rate a Meetup After each meeting, the app asks about your experience and interest level. We implemented a star rating system with tags that adapt based on your rating. These evaluations influence future meetup searches and help improve the community - nobody wants to spend free time with pushy salespeople.
Summary
We helped our partners to design and build a mobile app that turns shared interests into real-world meetups. We translated the vision into simple flows: discover like-minded people nearby, start conversations, coordinate time and place, and keep the discussion going before and after each in-person gathering.
By focusing on intuitive onboarding, smart matching, and lightweight planning tools, we help users move from chat to face-to-face faster. The result: more meaningful conversations, stronger local communities, and a product ready to scale across cities and event formats.
