Tackling the loneliness epidemic by facilitating friendships.
Outcome:
end-to-end design for mobile application
AI assisted journaling
product interaction enabled by Assistants API
View Prototype
CONTEXT
Loneliness is a health epidemic.
Loneliness is a serious issue in the US. A report suggests that around 36% of all Americans have experienced "serious loneliness," which has been exacerbated by the global pandemic and the advance of technology and social media.
This sparked the question: how might we design a tool that helps young adults build in person friendships?
DISCOVER
What struggles do young adults face when making friends?
I conducted 5 user interviews and identified a few common points of struggle.
People forget to reach out to others.
People have a hard time coming up with activities to do together
People struggle to remember topics and action items to follow up on.
People are spread thin want to be intentional about friendships.
DEFINE
Mapping Out the Target Audience
Age: 20s - Early 30s
Occupation: Young a professionals
Location: Urban cities
Goals and Motivations:
desire for close friendship and regular interactions rather than lots of acquaintances and occasional meet ups
desire for group hangouts in addition to 1:1 hangouts
Pain Points:
being busy and often forgetting to reach out to friends for long periods of time
having a hard time coming up with activities to do together - but in person or virtual for friends that are no longer in the area
struggling to remember topics of interest and follow up items
having a lot of acquaintances but few friends
Defining Product Goals:
Based on the user interviews, the products goals were to help users:
Remember to reach out to friends
Remember topics of interest and follow up items
Find activities that they and their friend(s) would be interested in
Reflect and be intentional with time invested in friendships
DEVELOP
Organizing PeaPal’s Content
The structure, content, and navigation of PeaPal was developed using an information architecture diagram. The home page and journaling page are shown here. To see the entire diagram click here.
Ideating and Wireframing
DELIVER
Design System and Visual Branding
Testing and Polishing PeaPal
After creating high fidelity mock ups I asked users to go through steps to create an account, add a friend and set a reminder, record a follow up item, look for activities to do with a friend, and journal to discover ways to be more intentional. Below are changes made based on feedback.
Testing and Polishing PeaPal
Notification and settings buttons were moved to the top.
Navigation bar has labels for accessibility and was decreased to 4 options.
Navigation bar was crowded with 6 options. Users were not sure what each button meant.
Before
Finding shared activities could only be done through filters. Users expected to be able to do some from the friends page.
After
Users can now search for shared activities from the friends page.
Before
Onboarding experience was too long for users and users wanted to know why contact syncing and preferences were needed.
After
Onboarding experience is shorter and has intermediate screens with explanations.
The Final Prototype
Problem 1: Reaching Out
People have a hard time remembering to reach out to friends.
Solution 1: Set Up Reminders
Allow people to set up reminders to reach out to friends.
Problem 2: Remembering
People have a hard time remembering topics of interest and follow up items.
Solution 2: Save Items
Allow people to record, easily view, and be notified of actions items and topics of interest
Problem 3: Finding Activities
People have a hard time finding activities that they and their friend will enjoy.
Solution 3: Activity Recommendations
Recommend activities to people based on shared interests and goals.
Problem 4:
People desire stronger relationships but feel spread thin.
Solution 4:
Facilitate journaling exercises so that people can be more intentional with how they spend their time.