Pictured ABOVE STORYBOARD OF SOCIALEYES APP CONCEPT
Project overview
Project name SocialEyes App concept by Naa-Korkoi Baddoo, Martha Brandt (me), Jalil Evans and Joyce Tsai
My role UX researcher and designer
Date January 2021 - April 2021
What was the purpose of this project?
Social distancing regulations have impacted students’ strategies for making new friends. The purpose of this project was to understand the changes of friendship-making prior to and during COVID-19, particularly in first-year college students.
What research did we conduct?
This was a semester long project where we utilized user interviews, co-design sessions, and diary studies to better understand the changes of friendship-making prior to and during COVID-19, particularly in first-year college students. We converted these findings into actionable insights that helped us to design and evaluate a digital prototype that incentivized in-person meetups.
Research Questions
1. How does social distancing affect strategies for making friends during the pandemic?
2. How does socialization (or lack of) play a role in a student's mental health?
3. What design implications does social distancing pose for new technologies in this area?
Hypothesis
Due to COVID-19 social distancing guidelines, first-year college students lack opportunities to spontaneously form new and organic social connections, as most remote interactions tend to be preplanned and formal.
Initial Findings from Literature Review
First-year students are particularly vulnerable due to lack of deep friendships and meaningful connections on a new campus.
Students perceived in-person interactions to be more valuable than remote interactions. However, social distancing guidelines negatively impacted students’ ability to meet in person interactions, directly impacting their mental health.
Technology is still limited in facilitating meaningful connections between people remotely. Technologies that incentivize in-person interactions have more positive outcomes in friendship forming.
Target user
Freshmen, transfer students, and first-year grad students
They are in a unique circumstance where they must navigate a completely new school environment while also abiding by social distancing regulations. We interviews 1 freshman, 2 transfer student and 1 first-year grad student who began a new university during the pandemic.
Pictured ABOVE Our FIRST YEAR STUDENT USER PERSONA
5 interviews were conducted with first year students via Zoom video calls lasting 40-60min.
We found that people prefer in-person interactions. All of our co-design participants preferred in-person interactions as opposed to online/video interactions.
People find it difficult using technologies to make friends / create meaningful connections online. Technology allows for some workarounds for physical distancing. Our freshman interviewee took advantage of online resources such as the class of 2024 Facebook Group, and sending people direct messages on Instagram or during Zoom class.
The pandemic has decreased people’s friendship standards. Although online is less effort than meeting someone in-person, these interactions tend to fall through because of low commitment on both ends.
Participants generally agree that COVID-19 has caused them to expect less out of their friendships. This has led to friend groups becoming smaller and increased risk of depression and anxiety.
Pictured LEFT RESULTS FROM DIARY ENTRY SHOWING THAT MOST SOCIAL INTERACTIONS OCCUR THROUGH TEXTING, SOCIAL MEDIA AND IN PERSON COMMUNICATION
Pictured RIGHT RESULTS FROM DIARY ENTRY SHOWING THAT MOST STUDENTS HAD 7+ SOCIAL INTERACTIONS PER TWO DAY PERIODS
We conducted a diary study with 5 first year students
Our diary study focused on students’ means for forming and maintaining new connections, both in-person and online. The results of our study helped us to understand what day-to-day activities students participate in that have opportunities to help them form and maintain new friendships.
Affinity Diagramming
We created an affinity diagram on Figma to combine our findings from the diary study. (reference screenshot on right)
People tend to put on an act when interacting with new acquaintances. One interviewee felt pressure to present her best self to people she doesn’t know well.
Taking advantage of forced social situations. Our diary study participants only really meet people during activities that they already take part in (e.g. class, hackathons, birthday parties). We can call these “forced” social situations—a situation where the primary focus isn’t socialization, but socializing is still warranted.
People have different preferences for social interactions. People have varying personalities and thus varying preferences for how they would like to meet people and keep in touch with them.
Strong desire to connect with new people. All of our diary study participants demonstrated a desire to connect with new people despite internal and external barriers.
Barriers to initiating new social interactions. Despite their interest in forming new connections, our diary study participants felt self-conscious about initiating interactions.
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Codesign Session with 5 first year students
Pictured LEFT SOLUTION WHERE STUDENT INPUTS PREFERENCES FOR THE ACTIVITY AND TIME and gets connected to students with similar PREFERENCES.
Pictured MIDDLE SOLUTION WHERE STUDENT GOES TO A PUBLIC KIOSK TO ENTER A NEW EVENT THAT ANYONE CAN VIEW AND JOIN
Pictured RIGHT SOLUTION WHERE STUDENT CAN VIEW ACTIVITIES EXCLUSIVE TO HIS/HER ScHOOL
Final Solution
We decided to design an app that gamifies the friend making process:
Users first input their name and interests and opt in to meet somebody new. The SocialEyes app matches based on interests algorithm and the pairs are now tasked to complete activities. Paired users complete an activity (taking a picture at the activity location) and upload to the app to gain 'SocialEyesing' points.
As activities are completed, the users earn points toward their friendship. Users can opt to exchange contact information at any point during these activities. Users also have access to their own network of connections—any person they matched with and completed at least one activity with will show up in this network list
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Pictured FIRST YOUR 'ACTIVITY HISTORY' Page
Pictured SECOND THE 'ACTIVITY HISTORY' PAGE of someone you connected with
Pictured THIRD YOUR DASHBOARD WITH A NOTIFICATION OF A NEW CONNECTION
Pictured FOURTH YOUR 'NETWORK' PAGE
Covid's Impact on Mental Health
Social distancing regulations due to Covid-19 have altered the college experience for students making school, work and social life a primarily remote experience. Forming new connections are crucial for mental health in general but specifically important for first year college students during the pandemic. Although our designs do not directly acknowledge this crisis, we choose to create a hybrid of in-person/remote interactions to accommodate for social distancing restrictions.
