bloom

Roadmap

Design Challenge:

How can we create a framework that allows busy university students to stay connected, engaged with, and enriched in their friendships?

Topic Exploration

Topic Exploration 🔎

Screener

• Seek people who value friendships and socializing
• People who want to stay closer with friends

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Struggle:

Wanted a unique topic that I was passionate about

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Resolution:

Each pitched ideas and put it to a vote

Topic Exploration 🔎

Screener

• Seek people who value friendships and socializing
• People who want to stay closer with friends

​

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​

Struggle:

Wanted a unique topic that I was passionate about

​

Resolution:

Each pitched ideas and put it to a vote

Topic Exploration 🔎

Screener

• Seek people who value friendships and socializing
• People who want to stay closer with friends

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​

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Struggle:

Wanted a unique topic that I was passionate about

​

Resolution:

Each pitched ideas and discussed pros and cons

Diary Study

Diary Study 📖

Study

How students maintain and foster their relationships through social interactions

• Google form
• Data and feelings around interaction

Pain points

• People find it hard reaching out
• Scheduling is difficult
• Awkward interactions
• Interactions can sometimes feel unnatural and not meaningful

“A bit challenging to plan since our schedules didn’t overlap well (eg jointly proposed 8 different times over chat until we finally found 1 shared time)”

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“Scrambling to recall what the last things we talked about (think about what new things have happened)”

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Diary Study 📖

Study

How students maintain and foster their relationships through social interactions

• Google form
• Data and feelings around interaction

Pain points

• People find it hard reaching out
• Scheduling is difficult
• Awkward interactions
• Interactions can sometimes feel unnatural and not meaningful

“A bit challenging to plan since our schedules didn’t overlap well (eg jointly proposed 8 different times over chat until we finally found 1 shared time)”

​

​

​

“Scrambling to recall what the last things we talked about (think about what new things have happened)”

​

Diary Study 📖

Study

How students maintain and foster their relationships through social interactions

• Google form
• Data and feelings around interaction

Pain points

• People find it hard reaching out
• Scheduling is difficult
• Awkward interactions
• Interactions can sometimes feel unnatural and not meaningful

“A bit challenging to plan since our schedules didn’t overlap well (eg jointly proposed 8 different times over chat until we finally found 1 shared time)”

​

​

​

“Scrambling to recall what the last things we talked about (think about what new things have happened)”

​

Personas

Personas🧍

Solution Finding

Intervention study

Study

Prompt every morning with an assigned friend to interact with

• Assigned activity, time frame, possible conversation topics

Reflection about activity

• Explanation for why they weren’t able to follow through, if not

Insights

Positive attitudes towards automation

Preferred activities integrated in their existing routine

Disliked conversation prompts

• Felt they were “mandatory” and “inauthentic”

Assumption Mapping

Testing

WBT people want to see their friend’s social updates across platforms all in one place

• Show a digest of compiled social updates across 1 wk

WBT that indicators for frequency of interaction will encourage more

• Show multiple versions of indicators for friend ranking

Insights

Social Updates

• Felt more connected and easier to maintain positive feelings between irl interactions

Social Indicators

• Appreciated as subtle reminders, but hesitant about manipulation

Mood Board

Usability Testing

Usability Tests

Study

Participants were guided through the main user flows and tasks in our app

• Onboarding, scheduling, post-interaction reflections, notes, viewing and interacting with friends

Insights

Concerns about missing use-cases

Uncertainty about “data access” and integration with other app permissions

Confusion about add vs. save buttons throughout app

“I’m thinking about the use case where people are just lonely – so the number of notifications might not necessarily have the same implications for each user.”

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“I really enjoyed the overall feel of the app - it was very calming and welcoming, from the color and design”

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Usability Tests

Study

Participants were guided through the main user flows and tasks in our app

• Onboarding, scheduling, post-interaction reflections, notes, viewing and interacting with friends

Insights

Concerns about missing use-cases

Uncertainty about “data access” and integration with other app permissions

Confusion about add vs. save buttons throughout app

“I’m thinking about the use case where people are just lonely – so the number of notifications might not necessarily have the same implications for each user.”

​

​

​

“I really enjoyed the overall feel of the app - it was very calming and welcoming, from the color and design”

​

Usability Tests

Study

Participants were guided through the main user flows and tasks in our app

• Onboarding, scheduling, post-interaction reflections, notes, viewing and interacting with friends

Insights

Concerns about missing use-cases

Uncertainty about “data access” and integration with other app permissions

Confusion about add vs. save buttons throughout app

“I’m thinking about the use case where people are just lonely – so the number of notifications might not necessarily have the same implications for each user.”

​

​

​

“I really enjoyed the overall feel of the app - it was very calming and welcoming, from the color and design”

​

Final Design

Final Design

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Figma Link

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Onboarding

Onboarding

1.

Onboarding

2.

Onboarding

3.

Friends

1.

Friends

2.

Feed

1.

Profile

1.

Scheduling

1.

Scheduling

2.

Scheduling

3.

Scheduling

Scheduling

Note taking

Note taking

Reflecting

Reflecting

Reflection

Did it work?

What would I do next time?

• Add suggestion features that are more mood-based
• Incorporate more spontaneity that comes with real life interactions
• Additional research on how to design our nudges to be non-manipulative

Learnings

• Better understanding of design strategies such as all the mappings and studies
• Many potential problems and solutions in our studies were contextual
• An activity we considered to be “low-stakes” was actually still significantly stressful if the person was busy
• How can we avoid emotional manipulation or causing unintentional stress through our app?

Thank you!

Design Process

Diary Study

Participants documented and reflected on all of their interactions

Personas

I created 4 different personas suited for our project based on the preliminary study results

Intervention

I sent participants daily nudges to interact with their friends along with conversation/activity ideas

Wireflows

I identified how personas would interact with a potential product & their needs

Observations

Insights

• Activities that where integrated into one’s routine were dramatically less stressful
• How willing someone is to initiate and complete interactions is more dependent on personal obligations and moods that day, rather than the activity itself
• Reflections correlated to more friendship appreciation

• Nudges keep relationships at the forefront of people's minds
• Automatic scheduling and specific friend suggestions caused individuals to interact more due to lowered effort
• Conversation prompts and activity suggestions added extra effort and cognitive load
• Felt more obligatory and draining when there were competing or more favorable obligations

Projected Directions

I already know:

Nudges for social interactions are beneficial and have yielded positive results

Features that add extra effort (i.e convo topics, activity suggestions) negative

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I want to know:

How can I formulate these nudges better to lower effort + add perceived ease?

• Semantics of the nudges
• Frequency of the nudges
• Customizability of the nudges by the user

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What are certain features I can design around the nudge that benefit it?

• Seamless scheduling
• Friendlist feed