Spark

Role: Product Designer -Rapid Research, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Rapid Prototyping
Team: Victoria Wang - Designer
Timeline: 8 hours, UXL design-a-thon '24

Overview

Spark strengthens bonds among students facing challenges maintaining high-maintenance friendships. With daily prompts and real-time messaging, Spark aims to enhance social experiences through prioritizing open communication and proactive engagement.

Objective

Intending to create an app that promotes bonding and relationship-building, we have narrowed down the problem space to students, specifically students with university students with high-maintenance friendships who have no tools to maintain strong bonds or create meaningful connections.

How might we break down the barriers that keep friends from bonding and makes building relationships more convenient and approachable?

HMW STATEMENT

Empathizing with our audience

To further understand this space, we conducted research to discover why friends drift apart, and what methods would be effective to maintain relationships.

We found some promising strategies to implement in our solution, but that’s not enough… We needed to hear from students to get a better grasp of the problem.

WHITE PAPER RESEARCH

“Relationship maintenance strategies include positivity, openness, assurances, sharing tasks, conflict management, social networks, and advice”

CHAPTER 8: BUILDING AND MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS - MILNE LIBRARY

FIGURE 1 - PRIMARY RESEARCH FINDINGS

Of the 68 students We surveyed, 81% found social media useful for staying in touch, but only 21% could maintain meaningful connections through those platforms. Through our survey, we found that social media has become a hub for entertainment and lost its original objective of connecting friends. Our participants also voiced that messaging was one of the best ways to keep up with their friends while they were in school. 

What's out there?

FIGURE 2 - COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS FINDINGS SUMMARY

To make sure we aren't creating something that has already been made, we took a look at the pros and cons of the current market of the most popular apps among our target demographic, they all have a barrier preventing students from maintaining their high-maintenance friendships.

Defining our Problem Space

With the data collected through our survey, we found 3 common themes through affinity mapping.

FIGURE 3 - AFFINITY MAP FINDINGS SUMMARY

  1. Lack of Communication

“Lack of communication, inability to tell hard truths so end up distancing, maybe just a friendship of convenience and it is no longer convenient”

  1. Relationship Duration/Initiation

“I don't tend to initiate contact, and that tends to leave my relationships wanting/fragile”

  1. Meaningful Connections

“Lack of meaningful conversations. Basic greetings till we drift apart. Often feel like I’m not close with friends, it feels like lack of initiation on their part but perhaps the fault lies with me and I’m unaware”

Using those insights, I was able to pick out three key pain points to keep in mind throughout the whole designing process to ensure that all needs are met.

Walking in their shoes

To better understand our user and how they're navigating the problem, we summarized our findings from the primary research into a digestible user persona.

FIGURE 4 - USER PERSONA

Prototyping and Iterations

Mapping out the main features, we modeled our app with timed prompt writing and answering to leverage the scarcity and exclusivity effect, follow-up on prompts that extend the conversation, and reminders of past prompts in some form.

FIGURE 5.1 - INITIAL SKETCHES

FIGURE 5.2 - MID-FI PROTOTYPES

Considerations

After developing our screens further and consulting our mentors, we reconsidered a few of our features.

  1. Tap-to-Share feature

We also thought of an in-person tap-to-share profile which we later scrapped because of the contradiction it had with our demographic. Our users want to maintain relationships and this feature is counter intuitive since they’re already meeting.

  1. Photo Sharing

Photo Sharing was another aspect of our app that we decided to scrap because it did not add to the main feature of our app, and actually took away since it took up so much space with no added value.

  1. Theme for Prompts

We considered a theme to the daily prompts to better help our users ask meaningful questions, that way it creates a smoother user experience 

Design considerations

When designing, we wanted to make sure we appealed to our audience by using a simple and youthful color palette, and a simple design system that does not take away from Spark’s main purpose.

FIGURE 6 - DESIGN SYSTEM

Final Solution

  1. Q&A Prompts

Initial touchpoint with Spark, Writing a prompt with the help of Spark's suggested prompt theme. Self-written prompts make conversations more personal and relevant which breaks down the barrier of initiation.

  1. Feed + Share a Prompt

The main page allows you to browse, respond, and react to your friend's prompts, while also opening the opportunity to continue the conversation outside of Spark, creating a deeper connection.

  1. Memories

The Memories feature highlights past prompts made, along with friend's responses. This feature acts as reassurance and a reminder that their friends care, maintaining a lasting connection, and helping you initiate a conversation.

Key Takeaways

Working on this project marked an important step in my design journey, Spark made me realize that slowing down in the problem space was crucial to making a successful product.

Due to the time constraint of this project, there were some steps that I would like to develop further like testing our app on our target demographic, making the UI more cohesive, and improving upon the accessibility, ensuring it is AODA compliant.