This project aims to help individuals maintain emotionally connected relationships over long distances by providing tools for consistent communication across time zones. Addressing challenges identified in research and interviews, it focuses on overcoming the difficulties of synchronizing calls and the impersonal nature of asynchronous communication.
Introduction
Syncing Hearts Across Time
Challenge & Outcome
Tackling a Saturated Market with a Fresh Approach
This project presented a significant challenge;
devising an innovative solution in a market saturated with established communication apps like WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, and FaceTime.
These platforms, with their user-friendly interfaces and large user bases, already offered calls, video chats, and texts, making it tough to introduce a novel concept.
Despite the convenience of these existing apps, our research identified specific pain points, particularly in managing time zone differences and the impersonality of current synchronous communication methods.
Our task was to think outside the box, to create a personal, shared space in the communication experience that differed from existing platforms. This required a deep understanding of user needs and an unconventional approach to design.
The goal is to enable people to maintain strong, emotionally connected bonds with loved ones, reducing feelings of disconnection and loneliness, and improving social and mental health.
The result was the creation of virtual rooms for asynchronous intimacy, addressing these unique challenges with timezone-aware features and shared spaces for emotional connections.
This experience not only tested our creativity and problem-solving skills but also significantly enhanced my abilities as a UX designer, teaching me the importance of innovative thinking in a competitive and evolving market.
Cracking the Code
Understanding the Emotional Barriers of Remote Relationships
Navigating the problem space involved conducting interviews and extensive research to understand the challenges of maintaining emotionally connected relationships over long distances.
Initial Interviews
We interviewed 10 individuals who rely on digital communication tools to stay connected with distant friends and family.
Our interview protocol included questions to understand the emotional and practical aspects of long-distance communication.
What communication challenges do you face?
Do time zone differences affect your communication?
Describe any communication misunderstandings you've experienced
How does distance affect your relationships emotionally?
What we asked
Interview Findings
The impersonal nature of technology leads to communication struggles and feelings of loneliness and disconnection.
Time zone differences make it difficult to schedule calls, leading to missed connections.
Missing everyday interactions with loved ones is a common experience.
Older family members often struggle to adapt to new communication technologies.
Our deep dive into long-distance communication uncovered a universal truth: the true challenge lies not just in staying connected, but in feeling connected.
Bridging the Emotional Gap
Insights the Shaped our Vision
Crossing Emotional Distances
90% people have at lease one long distance relationship. Understanding emotions and coordinating across time zones are major hurdles.
Compromising on Real-Time Connection
People desire real-time interaction but often settle for less due to scheduling conflicts.
Personalizing Virtual Spaces
Adding personal touches to virtual spaces can significantly improve emotional connection and social interaction.
Our research revealed a need to transcend traditional communication platforms. We sought to create virtual spaces that fostered intimacy and spontaneity, mirroring in-person interactions while addressing time zone challenges and user diversity.
After extensive brainstorming, we decided to go ahead with virtual rooms with timezone-aware features and shared spaces for personal expression, designed to enhance emotional connection and replicate meaningful interactions often missed in long-distance relationships. This approach significantly deepened our understanding of long-distance communication nuances and guided us towards an innovative, inclusive solution.
Our research identified the critical need for personalization and emotional connection in long-distance communication, driving the creation of innovative, user-centric features.
Designed with specific user groups in mind, our platform caters to young adults away from home, including students and professionals aged 18-35, as well as parents and grandparents who miss loved ones afar, typically aged 45 and older.
We have prioritized simplicity to accommodate the less tech-savvy, ensuring ease of use across all ages.
Additionally, our design aims to connect extended families and friends spread across different time zones, effectively bridging distances and enhancing connectivity.
Uniting Loved Ones
Designed for Every Generation
Core Features
Enhancing Long-Distance Relationships with Thoughtful Design
Virtual Room for One-on-One Interactions
Timezone-Aware Clock
Day/Night Indicator
Co-Customizable Corkboard
Emotional Connection Enhancement
These features are grounded in research, such as Griggio et al.'s findings on co-customization, which highlights that personalizing communication interfaces in close relationships can significantly express intimacy. The app's design aims to help users feel close to their loved ones despite time zone differences, while also enabling efficient communication of availability and schedules.
When Distance Fades
Story of a Virtual Reunion
This storyboard depicts the heartwarming connection between a grandmother and her grandson, separated by distance. A simple app helps them bridge the gap, leading to a joyful virtual reunion.
From Paper to Pixels
Crafting the User Journey
We brainstormed the visual elements and layout of the room, envisioning how different components would contribute to the overall user experience. We then conducted an internal cognitive walkthrough, simulating user interactions with the prototype to identify potential usability issues and areas for improvement.
Walkthroughs revealed usability concerns, such as confusion over profile photo dots, the corkboard's connection to photo albums, and note display duration.
Refining the Experience
Key Adjustments from Internal Evaluations
Challenges with color-coded availability indicators
We initially planned to use color-coded circles to show user availability status.
However, this could cause cognitive overload as users would need to memorize color meanings.
Additionally, color-coding could create accessibility issues for individuals with color vision deficiencies, leading to misinterpretation.
1/4
Sharpening the Vision
Refining our Prototype Through User Feedback
Following our initial internal review of the sketches and wireframes, we developed the first prototype and conducted user evaluations. Insights gained from this initial testing led to revisions and the creation of a second prototype, which underwent further user evaluation. Based on feedback from these sessions, we refined the design and created a third prototype. The following insights are a synthesis of the most significant findings that emerged from this iterative testing process:
Final Version
2nd Version
1st Version
What's Next?
Steps to Elevate RoomConnect
With RoomConnect’s core features in place, our next steps focus on enhancing user experience:
Usability Refinement: We aim to address concerns from cognitive walkthroughs and user evaluations, simplify corkboard interactions, improve navigation, and clarify icons like the day/night window and timezone clock.
Personalized Experience: We aim to expand customization options in virtual rooms, allowing users to add personal touches that reflect their relationships, deepening emotional connections.
Onboarding Guide: We aim to add an onboarding guide to make it easier for new users to adapt to the app, ensuring a smooth introduction to its features.
Takeaways
Essential Lessons from RoomConnect
This project was pivotal in my growth as a UX designer and problem solver. I gained several key insights:
Balancing Innovation with Familiarity: Introducing features like the timezone-aware clock and customizable corkboard required balancing innovation with user-friendliness, highlighting that new ideas must stay rooted in familiarity and ease of use.
Deep User Empathy: Understanding users' emotional nuances in long-distance relationships was key to creating a resonant product, shaping our design and problem-solving strategies.
Holistic Approach: This experience highlighted the value of considering all aspects—technical, emotional, and cultural—to create a solution that meets functional needs and fosters genuine connections.
Feedback-Driven Flexibility: Adapting based on user feedback underscored the importance of being open to change for a better user experience.
Inclusive Design: Designing for all ages emphasized the need for clear, simple interfaces and user guidance.
RoomConnect challenged me to go beyond the ordinary, transforming user pain points into design opportunities that connect people in meaningful ways.
RoomConnect
Timeline
My Role
Oct - Dec ‘23
UX Designer & Researcher
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296K
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6/10
users mistook non-interactive elements like plants for clickable objects
5/10
users found the process for posting notes to the corkboard to be too complex and time-consuming.
8/10
users misunderstood the stereo's functionality, expecting it to control music playback (play/pause) in addition to song selection.
7/10
users initially found the window's function as a day/night indicator for their loved one's timezone to be unclear.
6/10
users mistakenly assumed the clock was displaying their local time instead of their loved one's time.
RoomConnect
Timeline
My Role
Oct - Dec ‘23
UX Designer & Researcher
This project aims to help individuals maintain emotionally connected relationships over long distances by providing tools for consistent communication across time zones. Addressing challenges identified in research and interviews, it focuses on overcoming the difficulties of synchronizing calls and the impersonal nature of asynchronous communication.
Introduction
Syncing Hearts Across Time
Innovating Beyond the Status Quo
Tackling a Saturated Market with a Fresh Approach
This project presented a significant challenge;
devising an innovative solution in a market saturated with established communication apps like WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, and FaceTime.
These platforms, with their user-friendly interfaces and large user bases, already offered calls, video chats, and texts, making it tough to introduce a novel concept.
Despite the convenience of these existing apps, our research identified specific pain points, particularly in managing time zone differences and the impersonality of current synchronous communication methods.
Our task was to think outside the box, to create a personal, shared space in the communication experience that differed from existing platforms. This required a deep understanding of user needs and an unconventional approach to design.
The goal is to enable people to maintain strong, emotionally connected bonds with loved ones, reducing feelings of disconnection and loneliness, and improving social and mental health.
The result was the creation of virtual rooms for asynchronous intimacy, addressing these unique challenges with timezone-aware features and shared spaces for emotional connections.
This experience not only tested our creativity and problem-solving skills but also significantly enhanced my abilities as a UX designer, teaching me the importance of innovative thinking in a competitive and evolving market.
Cracking the Code
Understanding the Emotional Barriers of Remote Relationships
Navigating the problem space involved conducting interviews and extensive research to understand the challenges of maintaining emotionally connected relationships over long distances.
Initial Interviews
We interviewed 10 individuals who rely on digital communication tools to stay connected with distant friends and family.
Our interview protocol included questions to understand the emotional and practical aspects of long-distance communication.
What communication challenges do you face?
Do time zone differences affect your communication?
Describe any communication misunderstandings you've experienced
How does distance affect your relationships emotionally?
What we asked
Interview Findings
The impersonal nature of technology leads to communication struggles and feelings of loneliness and disconnection.
Time zone differences make it difficult to schedule calls, leading to missed connections.
Missing everyday interactions with loved ones is a common experience.
Older family members often struggle to adapt to new communication technologies.
Our deep dive into long-distance communication uncovered a universal truth: the true challenge lies not just in staying connected, but in feeling connected.
Bridging the Emotional Gap
Insights the Shaped our Vision
Challenges
90% people have at lease one long distance relationship. Understanding emotions and coordinating across time zones are major hurdles.
Communication Preferences
People desire real-time interaction but often settle for less due to scheduling conflicts.
The Power of Personalization
Adding personal touches to virtual spaces can significantly improve emotional connection and social interaction.
Our research revealed a need to transcend traditional communication platforms. We sought to create virtual spaces that fostered intimacy and spontaneity, mirroring in-person interactions while addressing time zone challenges and user diversity.
After extensive brainstorming, we decided to go ahead with virtual rooms with timezone-aware features and shared spaces for personal expression, designed to enhance emotional connection and replicate meaningful interactions often missed in long-distance relationships. This approach significantly deepened our understanding of long-distance communication nuances and guided us towards an innovative, inclusive solution.
Our research identified the critical need for personalization and emotional connection in long-distance communication, driving the creation of innovative, user-centric features.
Designed with specific user groups in mind, our platform caters to young adults away from home, including students and professionals aged 18-35, as well as parents and grandparents who miss loved ones afar, typically aged 45 and older.
We have prioritized simplicity to accommodate the less tech-savvy, ensuring ease of use across all ages.
Additionally, our design aims to connect extended families and friends spread across different time zones, effectively bridging distances and enhancing connectivity.
Uniting Loved Ones
Designed for Every Generation
Core Features
Enhancing Long-Distance Relationships with Thoughtful Design
Virtual Room for One-on-One Interactions
Timezone-Aware Clock
Day/Night Indicator
Co-Customizable Corkboard
Emotional Connection Enhancement
These features are grounded in research, such as Griggio et al.'s findings on co-customization, which highlights that personalizing communication interfaces in close relationships can significantly express intimacy. The app's design aims to help users feel close to their loved ones despite time zone differences, while also enabling efficient communication of availability and schedules.
When Distance Fades
Story of a Virtual Reunion
This storyboard depicts the heartwarming connection between a grandmother and her grandson, separated by distance. A simple app helps them bridge the gap, leading to a joyful virtual reunion.
From Paper to Pixels
Crafting the User Journey
We brainstormed the visual elements and layout of the room, envisioning how different components would contribute to the overall user experience. We then conducted an internal cognitive walkthrough, simulating user interactions with the prototype to identify potential usability issues and areas for improvement.
Walkthroughs revealed usability concerns, such as confusion over profile photo dots, the corkboard's connection to photo albums, and note display duration.
Refining the Experience
Key Adjustments from Internal Evaluations
Challenges with color-coded availability indicators
We initially planned to use color-coded circles to show user availability status.
However, this could cause cognitive overload as users would need to memorize color meanings.
Additionally, color-coding could create accessibility issues for individuals with color vision deficiencies, leading to misinterpretation.
1/4
Sharpening the Vision
Refining our Prototype Through User Feedback
Following our initial internal review of the sketches and wireframes, we developed the first prototype and conducted user evaluations. Insights gained from this initial testing led to revisions and the creation of a second prototype, which underwent further user evaluation. Based on feedback from these sessions, we refined the design and created a third prototype. The following insights are a synthesis of the most significant findings that emerged from this iterative testing process:
6/10
users mistook non-interactive elements like plants for clickable objects
5/10
users found the process for posting notes to the corkboard to be too complex and time-consuming.
8/10
users misunderstood the stereo's functionality, expecting it to control music playback (play/pause) in addition to song selection.
7/10
users initially found the window's function as a day/night indicator for their loved one's timezone to be unclear.
6/10
users mistakenly assumed the clock was displaying their local time instead of their loved one's time.
Final Version
2nd Version
1st Version
The Path Forward
Steps to Elevate RoomConnect
With RoomConnect’s core features in place, our next steps focus on enhancing user experience:
Usability Refinement: We aim to address concerns from cognitive walkthroughs and user evaluations, simplify corkboard interactions, improve navigation, and clarify icons like the day/night window and timezone clock.
Personalized Experience: We aim to expand customization options in virtual rooms, allowing users to add personal touches that reflect their relationships, deepening emotional connections.
Onboarding Guide: We aim to add an onboarding guide to make it easier for new users to adapt to the app, ensuring a smooth introduction to its features.
Designing with Purpose
Essential Lessons from RoomConnect
This project was pivotal in my growth as a UX designer and problem solver. I gained several key insights:
Balancing Innovation with Familiarity: Introducing features like the timezone-aware clock and customizable corkboard required balancing innovation with user-friendliness, highlighting that new ideas must stay rooted in familiarity and ease of use.
Deep User Empathy: Understanding users' emotional nuances in long-distance relationships was key to creating a resonant product, shaping our design and problem-solving strategies.
Holistic Approach: This experience highlighted the value of considering all aspects—technical, emotional, and cultural—to create a solution that meets functional needs and fosters genuine connections.
Feedback-Driven Flexibility: Adapting based on user feedback underscored the importance of being open to change for a better user experience.
Inclusive Design: Designing for all ages emphasized the need for clear, simple interfaces and user guidance.
RoomConnect challenged me to go beyond the ordinary, transforming user pain points into design opportunities that connect people in meaningful ways.
152
HEADING ABC
Sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc vulputate libero et velit interdum, ac aliquet odio mattis.
35.6%
HEADING ABC
Sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc vulputate libero et velit interdum, ac aliquet odio mattis.
296K
HEADING ABC
Sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc vulputate libero et velit interdum, ac aliquet odio mattis.
RoomConnect
Timeline
My Role
Oct - Dec ‘23
UX Designer & Researcher
This project aims to help individuals maintain emotionally connected relationships over long distances by providing tools for consistent communication across time zones. Addressing challenges identified in research and interviews, it focuses on overcoming the difficulties of synchronizing calls and the impersonal nature of asynchronous communication.
Introduction
Syncing Hearts Across Time
Innovating Beyond the Status Quo
Tackling a Saturated Market with a Fresh Approach
This project presented a significant challenge;
devising an innovative solution in a market saturated with established communication apps like WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, and FaceTime.
These platforms, with their user-friendly interfaces and large user bases, already offered calls, video chats, and texts, making it tough to introduce a novel concept.
Despite the convenience of these existing apps, our research identified specific pain points, particularly in managing time zone differences and the impersonality of current synchronous communication methods.
Our task was to think outside the box, to create a personal, shared space in the communication experience that differed from existing platforms. This required a deep understanding of user needs and an unconventional approach to design.
The goal is to enable people to maintain strong, emotionally connected bonds with loved ones, reducing feelings of disconnection and loneliness, and improving social and mental health.
The result was the creation of virtual rooms for asynchronous intimacy, addressing these unique challenges with timezone-aware features and shared spaces for emotional connections.
This experience not only tested our creativity and problem-solving skills but also significantly enhanced my abilities as a UX designer, teaching me the importance of innovative thinking in a competitive and evolving market.
Cracking the Code
Understanding the Emotional Barriers of Remote Relationships
Navigating the problem space involved conducting interviews and extensive research to understand the challenges of maintaining emotionally connected relationships over long distances.
Initial Interviews
We interviewed 10 individuals who rely on digital communication tools to stay connected with distant friends and family.
Our interview protocol included questions to understand the emotional and practical aspects of long-distance communication.
What communication challenges do you face?
Do time zone differences affect your communication?
Describe any communication misunderstandings you've experienced
How does distance affect your relationships emotionally?
What we asked
Interview Findings
The impersonal nature of technology leads to communication struggles and feelings of loneliness and disconnection.
Time zone differences make it difficult to schedule calls, leading to missed connections.
Missing everyday interactions with loved ones is a common experience.
Older family members often struggle to adapt to new communication technologies.
Our deep dive into long-distance communication uncovered a universal truth: the true challenge lies not just in staying connected, but in feeling connected.
Bridging the Emotional Gap
Insights the Shaped our Vision
Challenges
90% people have at lease one long distance relationship. Understanding emotions and coordinating across time zones are major hurdles.
Communication Preferences
People desire real-time interaction but often settle for less due to scheduling conflicts.
The Power of Personalization
Adding personal touches to virtual spaces can significantly improve emotional connection and social interaction.
Our research revealed a need to transcend traditional communication platforms. We sought to create virtual spaces that fostered intimacy and spontaneity, mirroring in-person interactions while addressing time zone challenges and user diversity.
After extensive brainstorming, we decided to go ahead with virtual rooms with timezone-aware features and shared spaces for personal expression, designed to enhance emotional connection and replicate meaningful interactions often missed in long-distance relationships. This approach significantly deepened our understanding of long-distance communication nuances and guided us towards an innovative, inclusive solution.
Our research identified the critical need for personalization and emotional connection in long-distance communication, driving the creation of innovative, user-centric features.
Designed with specific user groups in mind, our platform caters to young adults away from home, including students and professionals aged 18-35, as well as parents and grandparents who miss loved ones afar, typically aged 45 and older.
We have prioritized simplicity to accommodate the less tech-savvy, ensuring ease of use across all ages.
Additionally, our design aims to connect extended families and friends spread across different time zones, effectively bridging distances and enhancing connectivity.
Uniting Loved Ones
Designed for Every Generation
Core Features
Enhancing Long-Distance Relationships with Thoughtful Design
Virtual Room for One-on-One Interactions
Timezone-Aware Clock
Day/Night Indicator
Co-Customizable Corkboard
Emotional Connection Enhancement
These features are grounded in research, such as Griggio et al.'s findings on co-customization, which highlights that personalizing communication interfaces in close relationships can significantly express intimacy. The app's design aims to help users feel close to their loved ones despite time zone differences, while also enabling efficient communication of availability and schedules.
When Distance Fades
Story of a Virtual Reunion
This storyboard depicts the heartwarming connection between a grandmother and her grandson, separated by distance. A simple app helps them bridge the gap, leading to a joyful virtual reunion.
From Paper to Pixels
Crafting the User Journey
We brainstormed the visual elements and layout of the room, envisioning how different components would contribute to the overall user experience. We then conducted an internal cognitive walkthrough, simulating user interactions with the prototype to identify potential usability issues and areas for improvement.
Walkthroughs revealed usability concerns, such as confusion over profile photo dots, the corkboard's connection to photo albums, and note display duration.
Refining the Experience
Key Adjustments from Internal Evaluations
Challenges with color-coded availability indicators
We initially planned to use color-coded circles to show user availability status.
However, this could cause cognitive overload as users would need to memorize color meanings.
Additionally, color-coding could create accessibility issues for individuals with color vision deficiencies, leading to misinterpretation.
1/4
Sharpening the Vision
Refining our Prototype Through User Feedback
Following our initial internal review of the sketches and wireframes, we developed the first prototype and conducted user evaluations. Insights gained from this initial testing led to revisions and the creation of a second prototype, which underwent further user evaluation. Based on feedback from these sessions, we refined the design and created a third prototype. The following insights are a synthesis of the most significant findings that emerged from this iterative testing process:
6/10
users mistook non-interactive elements like plants for clickable objects
5/10
users found the process for posting notes to the corkboard to be too complex and time-consuming.
8/10
users misunderstood the stereo's functionality, expecting it to control music playback (play/pause) in addition to song selection.
7/10
users initially found the window's function as a day/night indicator for their loved one's timezone to be unclear.
6/10
users mistakenly assumed the clock was displaying their local time instead of their loved one's time.
Final Version
2nd Version
1st Version
The Path Forward
Steps to Elevate RoomConnect
With RoomConnect’s core features in place, our next steps focus on enhancing user experience:
Usability Refinement: We aim to address concerns from cognitive walkthroughs and user evaluations, simplify corkboard interactions, improve navigation, and clarify icons like the day/night window and timezone clock.
Personalized Experience: We aim to expand customization options in virtual rooms, allowing users to add personal touches that reflect their relationships, deepening emotional connections.
Onboarding Guide: We aim to add an onboarding guide to make it easier for new users to adapt to the app, ensuring a smooth introduction to its features.
Designing with Purpose
Essential Lessons from RoomConnect
This project was pivotal in my growth as a UX designer and problem solver. I gained several key insights:
Deep User Empathy: Understanding the emotional nuances of users in long-distance relationships was essential to creating a product that truly resonated. This empathy shaped our design decisions and problem-solving strategies.
Balancing Innovation with Familiarity: Introducing features like the timezone-aware clock, window, and co-customizable corkboard required a careful balance between innovation and user-friendliness. This taught me that groundbreaking ideas must be anchored in familiarity and ease of use.
Inclusive Design Across Generations: Designing for a diverse age range emphasized the importance of inclusivity. Ensuring older adults could navigate the app as easily as younger users highlighted the need for clear, simple design and comprehensive user guidance.
Adapting Design Based on Feedback: The project reinforced the value of flexibility and responsiveness. Adapting the navigation and interaction flow based on user feedback underscored the importance of being open to change to enhance the user experience.
Holistic Problem-Solving: This experience taught me the importance of a holistic approach to design, considering technical, functional, emotional, social, and cultural contexts. This led to a solution that not only met functional needs but also fostered genuine emotional connections.
RoomConnect challenged me to go beyond the ordinary, transforming user pain points into design opportunities that connect people in meaningful ways.
152
HEADING ABC
Sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc vulputate libero et velit interdum, ac aliquet odio mattis.
35.6%
HEADING ABC
Sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc vulputate libero et velit interdum, ac aliquet odio mattis.
296K
HEADING ABC
Sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc vulputate libero et velit interdum, ac aliquet odio mattis.