.png)
Research has shown:
A recent report suggests that 36% of all Americans— including 61% of young adults feel “serious loneliness” which has increased substantially since the outbreak of Covid.
Throughout the pandemic, reevaluation of the strength and value of relationships in their lives have occurred– causing social circles to dwindle. Either during or after their relationship evaluations, there were people realizing they no longer have a support system or anyone to turn to due to relationship evaluation or even covid-related deaths of those close to them.
There is also evidence showing after this change, people have felt even more distanced from some relationships– even after the lockdown ceased and restrictions eased up.
I conducted a survey to gain further insight of experiences with loneliness and was able to have 54 people take it.
Do you feel isolated from others?
Do you experience loneliness?
When did you start feeling loneliness?
"With people struggling to socialize, how might we help them connect with each other?"
With the secondary and primary research showing how prevalent loneliness is, I decided to move forward with user interviews.
I gathered 5 participants and held Zoom calls to gain further insight on what users are looking for to help with this issue.
With the information gathered and synthesized from the interviews, I created an affinity map and found:
- Users want to meet people in real life
- There was a strong yearning for connection
- Want a sense of belonging and purpose
- They miss the small interactions in day to day life
- Strictly digital relationships of any type aren’t ideal
The sitemap needed to be intuitive and straightforward. I wanted these three features to be the draw in for users:
- Personalized experience via choosing interests and taking a personality test to match the users with events they’d actually enjoy.
- Three question quiz to help narrow down the search and prevent option paralysis.
- The networking feature that allows users to match and connect with others based off personality traits and interests— instead of throwing random people together.
Here’s what the process would look like for a user to sign up and take the mini quiz to sign up for an event.
With the user flow finished, I moved on to sketching out to get all of my ideas out on the screen.
I was still on the fence with the format of the personality test and interest pages. I was still on the hunt for a personality test, but felt the interests page was too cluttered and wanted to figure out how to minimize it.
Both features were crucial to creating a personalized experience for users in not only helping matching with fellow users, but to also being matched with events that they're likely to enjoy.
Home page/Option paralysis quiz:
After designing wireframes, I went ahead with user testing.
With 5 users via Zoom, they tested out the wireframes to see if the app was easy to navigate, the icon imagery was recognizable, and whether or not the button placements were appropriately placed.
Although the feedback was positive, I still had reservations about the personality test. I didn’t feel it would yield an accurate result of the users’ personality.
.png)
.png)
While continuing to think of how to improve the personality test feature, I moved forward with the UI. I wanted vibrant colors for the app to exude fun and excitement for the users and to be visually appealing. The keywords I stuck to was: welcoming, encouraging, exciting, fun, & mysterious.
Through zoom, I held a second round of usability testing with 5 new users. These were the results:
The research I did made me realize how important it is to have a safe and fun space to connect with others. While only a concept, I feel this app would help people connect with others that's different than existing apps.
What I would have done differently:
- Gotten more users to interview for user synthesis information. Although my research was insightful for the user perspective, I still felt like I only scratched the surface.
- Collaborators. It would’ve been so helpful to have had the extra brain power to flesh out ideas I had or haven’t had!