Critical Interactions
A story about sticky notes, wireframes, and how well we know ourselves.
project description
This was an academic project completed during the final year of my Bachelor of Design. It was a month-long exercise in design thinking, resulting in a final, clickable prototype. It did not have a set problem statement; generating this was part of the assignment.
problem finding
Idea generating and calls to action
As a class, and by following the guidelines of Jake Knapp’s GV protocol for a design sprint, we came up a few abstract concepts surrounding technology and relationships that we wanted to explore further.
One criterion we decided to focus on as a class was the idea of social media and relationships, and whether they foster real meaning, or create a false sense of intimacy with those in our online sphere.
Personally, the final problem area that I decided to focus on was time. What do we do when our friends don’t have time for us? What do we do when we don’t have time to visit friends?
The call to action, or call to question rather, is this: how might we identify and maintain our closest relationships?
Pain point mapping
Using the above question as a jumping off point, we began to find pain points as well as relevant scenarios. At this point we began working separately on our own projects, with each case study having its own unique spin on the question.
I used the following imaginary scenario to continue brainstorming:
- Ben sees tickets to a concert of a band he really likes and quickly phones one his best friends, Riley.
Riley says he is free and would love to go to the concert. Ben is happy and buys two tickets online.
The day before the concert Riley tells Ben that he is swamped at work, and has to work overtime, so he can’t go to the concert. Ben understands, but is still upset.
Ben tries finding someone else he can go to the concert with, but all of his friends are either busy or are going with someone else. Ben can’t join them because seats are assigned and they are in a different area of the concert venue.
Ben is upset. He doesn’t want to go to the concert alone, but really wants to see his favourite band. He understands that Riley didn’t mean to inconvenience him, but he can’t help but feel resentment.
Ben ends up selling his concert tickets.
Problem statement
How might we identify and maintain our closest relationships?
While it would have been easy to go the route of strengthening previous relationships, I wanted to take a different approach. I settled on this question: If we know who our best friends are, is there a way to find others like them? Could our best friend’s best friend be our best friend?
These are the types of questions I set out to answer in my research.
Persona
Not only did I want to use personal and anecdotal experience to aid me in designing this solution to the problem area, but I knew early on that I wanted to conduct some type of primary research.
The people I have access to, and who would most likely be answering any survey I put out, would be in their late teens to late twenties, so in the 18-30 age range. As I myself fit into this range, I wanted to focus on this user group.
These users tend to be away from home, or moving out for the first time, leaving close bonds behind. Or, they may be entering the workforce and no longer have school as a way to make and maintain friendships.
You’ve met Ben.
He’s in his late twenties, a recent graduate, and is working as an entry level employee in the industry he obtained his degree in.
Ben was living near campus with roommates while he was in school, but rent was too high and now he has a one-bedroom apartment closer to his work downtown. Ben misses seeing his friends in the library, or at the cafes and restaurants near the university.
Ben is the only junior employee at his job, and so the majority of his co-workers are married and have children. He doesn’t have a lot in common with them besides his job.
His closest friends have graduated and moved away, or are getting married and starting families of their own. While he loves talking on the phone, or playing video games with them, its not the same as face-to-face interaction.
Ben wants to find people like his friends to attend concerts or movies with him, or to just hang out and check out the latest restaurant with.
This is where fallback friend comes in.
idea generation & research
Brainstorm
Using the Walt Disney brainstorm method, a group consisiting of myself and two other students brainstormed ideas that would set out to answer the question of keeping friendships across time and space.
We discussed teleportation, VR, holographic first dates, hieroglyphs, the elimination of a monetary society, batman-esque signals for friends, and super-speed trains. Nothing was off-limits.
We ultimately came up with a VR concept that would simulate in-person interaction. However, since this concept is not currently feasible, we each went a different route stemming from that initial idea.
Design sprint documentation
The Design Sprint forced us to ideate, and by eliminating technology we were able to dream up crazy ideas without immediately searching online to see if others either had the same idea, or whether it had already been executed. In this manner we didn’t limit ourselves on our ideating, which is what became the basis of the final product.
Primary research
If you use online dating platforms, do you think other people’s bios are an accurate reflection of their personalities?
Would you be more inclined to believe someone’s profile/bio if it was written by a friend or family member?
Industry survey research
Academic research
Everyone knows that dating and personal bios are subjective, and that we might see ourselves in a better light than do our friends and family. But how much of this is true?
SAGE Journals published an article in 2011 that stated that to know our true selves, we must take into account the way others perceive us, especially when it comes to our less than glamourous traits. While we are pretty good at recognizing our positive qualities, we aren’t very realistic with our negative traits.
Psych Central stated that in order to get a well-rounded view of a person, we should take into account both sides. Basically, ask their mom and their ex-partner to get an even view.
IPIP, the International Personality Item Pool, released free of charge a 50 question document that allows someone to determine where on the “Big 5” personality chart they lie; based on openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. This is the basis for what I built my questionnaire around.
prototyping
Categorization
I compiled every last detai that a person might want to get from using the website, and then generalized each to an overarching theme.
Then, I categorized the themes into sub-headings and headings, creating a physical sitemap that could be iterated upon,
Wireframes
From my previous research with Airbnb, something I came to find was that the edition of the site where you could immediately start scrolling to find out more information was vastly more intuitive and user-friendly that the edition of the site that had only the booking option and search feature on the main screen.
I wanted people to be able to uncover information right away, rather than having to click through multiple menus and jump through different hoops just to get what they wanted. This is how the “about” section ultimately became the home screen, and more secondary information was delegated to the traditional “about” page.
Using the physical prototype I made with index cards, I referenced these while coming up with the overall design flow of the website, to ensure its ease of use.
Sitemap
While a lot of the information can be found on the first page of the website, due to the complexity of the concept, multiple levels of hierachy are required.
Learning about the website can be done on the first few clicks, but it takes a bit more than that to access your profile and ultimately encounter someone to spend time with.
I tried multiple iterations of the format of the website, however when pairing down to the fewest levels of hierarchy this was the simplest one I could uncover that still made the site seem streamlined, easy to use, and without displaying too much information on one page.
final concept
While a lot of the information can be found on the first page of the website, due to the complexity of the concept, multiple levels of hierachy are required.
Learning about the website can be done on the first few clicks, but it takes a bit more than that to access your profile and ultimately encounter someone to spend time with.
I tried multiple iterations of the format of the website, however when pairing down to the fewest levels of hierarchy this was the simplest one I could uncover that still made the site seem streamlined, easy to use, and without displaying too much information on one page.
