Sincerely,
A mobile app personalizing and encouraging slower connection, storing memories + kindness in the digital age.
Sector Role Team Function Tools
Education Co-Creator Group (4) Mobile App Figma
sincerely,
Sector Role Team Size Function Tools
Interactive Environment
Community Four Mobile app Figma
Interaction Designer
Project Manager
01 The Challenge (Opportunity!)
In an era shaped by digital interactions, remote work, and evolving social norms, how can design bring people closer together?
3 day timeline.
02 Background (A need for...)
Can you recall a close friend that you lost touch with due to distance? Most social platforms focused on human interaction lean towards the facilitation of new contacts (Tinder, Bumble Friends, etc) and rapidly making new connections, rather than strengthening the current ones. Those that do incentivize it to such a point that they seem to lack intimacy.
It remains difficult to maintain long distance relationships, between friends and other connections.
03 Target Group & Research
Generally, there is a constant sense of immediacy, urgency, and stress, which is temporarily diffused but exacerbated long-term by current social connection apps.
Our desk research indicated a state of tension while using social media.
A compilation of annotated and synthesized notes on research with regards to instant messaging, social media, and their effects on one's emotional state.
The secondary research indicated audiences' desire for authenticity and comfort, and the saturation of stress-inducing, rapid-fire communication apps. These seemed to almost invoke a sensory overload and stress in users over time. On the other hand, lengthy communication-style apps have done well as well, although there are fewer on the market and tend to have smaller user bases-- such as 'deco my tree' (communication delivered 1x per year), that has a solid returning customer base of more than 20,000. This suggested a potential for success, with the right execution.
Market research mapped into a diagram analysis of what aspects of enjoyment and communication popular and niche apps lacked or concentrated on.
04 Ideation & Visual Style
Initially inspired by snail mail, but pushed beyond mail's limits. One can send digital, customizable letters to long-distance friends, loved ones (or yourself) and choose when they receive it (their birthday, a holiday, etc), along with collectible trinkets, photos, digital gifts such as movies, and music!
Over the course of the designathon, we rapidly crafted low-fi and mid-fi prototypes, curating visuals around a sense of intimacy and care, drawing the user into an experience. Overall, we sought to emphasize authentic communication and the quality of positive interaction in the process of storing memories and retrieving memories through audiovisuals + text.
Figjam and figma prototyped iterative drafts of various layouts for the app.
Relaxing gamification was iterated upon to include trinkets as collectibles (gacha), photos, and music, as well as a notification for when someone has sent the user a capsule, detailing the time it will be unlocked for them to open.
Notifications are again sent as the opening date nears, to build anticipation.
05 Reflection
Through this, we learned different methods to increase a sense of intimacy in Generation Z and beyond. I once had a friend who gave me a physical gift and wrote me a long letter for my birthday, rather than the now-ubiquitous one-line text message, and I still recall the joy I experienced. After I moved away, it became difficult for us to continue this form of gift + letter-giving, with our tendency to lose papers and ever-present online shipping costs. This app gave our team a way to preserve and archive intimacy over time, extending from stickers to trinkets such as music and movies that could not be shipped physically.
Perhaps a year later, even if one has forgotten about this app and a once-close relationship, a letter that had been waiting to be unlocked is finally allowed to be opened-- upon notification, the user reads the letter and receives the digital gifts in the capsule, recalling a memory and their friend.
On another note, this sprint taught me the importance of rapid prototyping and intensive collaboration with the rest of my team, requiring us to push out a 'complete' body of work in 3 days.