Team
Fleet
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Design a digital product for social health. Take a human-centered design (HCD) approach in conducting user research to determine the need and designing a product to address it.
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Usability Testing
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Collaboration on Miro
Prototyping of Figma
Institution
Contributions
Context
Summer 2024 | Graduate School 6-Day Design Sprint
in collaboration with Leslie Scherger, Mili Dhru, Natalie Lim & Serena Trang
M.A. in Design focused on Health
University of Texas at Austin
Design Research, UX Design, Prototyping, Usability Testing
01. Discover
What is Social Health?
Project Scoping
Social health is the ability to perform normal social roles, how one gets along with others and how others react to them, and incorporates personality, social skills, and one's available social supports. Due to the constraints of this project, we narrowed our focus to social isolation.
24% of young adults aged 18-29 experienced feelings of loneliness “a lot of the day”
Research by Kirwan et al. (2024) shows loneliness is quite common amongst young adults. With this in mind, we determined that our target audience for this digital solution would be young adults aged 25-30.
In-depth Interviews
We decided to interview people that fell within this age group by reaching out to our individual networks and recruiting people who had recently moved to a new place. We wanted to include this criteria because it served as an “extreme” circumstance that could represent a wide range of our user base.
We interviewed 4 people virtually and in-person to learn about their experiences with social isolation, moving, interaction and connectedness.
Empathy Map
Tip: Hover or tap on image to see an excerpt of our research data mapped by affinity!
02. Define
Uncovering Pain Points and Insights
1
Pain point
We want meaningful friendships but it's intimidating to express to someone new that you want to become closer friends.
Insight
Closer 1-1 friendships make people feel like they belong.
2
Pain point
It’s more fulfilling to connect in-person, but it’s hard to transition an online friendship beyond the digital experience.
Insight
Facilitating in-person connections can lead to stronger feelings of belonging.
3
Pain point
You can know someone through a class or event but to know them better, you need to go beyond that one shared experience.
Insight
The more engaging an experience is, the more effective it is in motivating people to use it. Routinely experiencing new things with people can be rewarding and motivating
Design Challenge
How might we create a safe digital platform for adults 25-30 years old to help them develop meaningful relationships beyond the digital experience?
03. Design
Ideate, Ideate, Ideate
Iterations
A rapid round of ideation kickstarted the design process. We started with an event based platform as a response to encouraging in-person connections. We came across several setbacks, such as realizing that the app was not motivating enough or that it was too similar to existing apps. Through several rounds of brainstorming and iteration we came closer to creating an app which would fulfill our user's needs.
User Flow, Wireframes & Paper Prototypes
04. Deliver
Introducing Fleet
Low Fidelity Prototypes
High Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing Feedback
Final Outcome
05. Learnings
Lessons Learned
This was my first design project coming out of architecture. The way things are done differently shifted my mindset positively and broadened my perspectives. I learned (and unlearned a lot), but here are my most memorable takeaways:
Design for Humans as They Are
Not as we want them to be. It's not the user's job to understand the design, it's the designer's responsibility to make the design easily understandable for users.
Quantity of Ideas breeds Quality
Letting go of the need to be refined at early stages opens up space for more growth. All ideas should be welcomed.
We’re More Than the Sum of Our Parts
Good collaboration between stakeholders and designers from different backgrounds can create a solution that no one can come up with individually.
How could the design be improved?
I would love to hone in on the UX and UI of the app, incorporating more research and rigorous testing to develop an pleasurable and intuitive experience.
How notifications could trigger action and guide users to their desired goal is also something I would love to explore.