top of page
RelationSeed
PROBLEM
Time zone and schedule differences make LDRs difficult to maintain
Long-distance relationships (lovers, friends, family) require enormous effort from both parties to maintain. Differences in time zones and daily schedules make it difficult to have spontaneous and synchronous conversations that nourish a relationship. Add in last-minute changes in schedules and emergencies, maintaining consistent contact can feel like a chore sometimes.
SOLUTION
Grow your garden!
-
Agree to a routine contact schedule and stick to it to keep your garden alive and well
-
With every contact, a tree grows a little bigger
-
At the end of the month, you get a full-grown tree!
Calendar integration
-
Integrating user's personal calendars for easy access
-
System matches calendars and suggest a time for routine contact
Asynchronous alternative
-
Can't come to the phone right now? Send a voice note, photo or video to make up for it!
-
Chat function to compensate for a missed call to keep your garden growing
APPROACH
01
Research
User Interviews
Interaction Analysis
02
Define
Affinity Diagram
Personas
03
Design
Wireframing
Lo-fi Prototype
Storyboard
04
Evaluate
Usability Test
Heuristic Evaluation
USER STUDY
-
User Interviews
-
The team carried out user interviews with 5 interviewees, including international students based in Singapore and parents with children studying overseas. We asked them questions to understand their current and desired practices for maintaining contact with their families abroad, including both synchronous and asynchronous methods.
-
-
User Study
-
​With the same interviewees, the team studied their behaviour by having them reenact how they would usually call their families, beginning with scheduling the call. This helped us to identify subconscious actions by the interviewees that may not have been explicitly mentioned during the interview.
-
-
​Content and Interaction Analyses
-
​With the notes, audio and video recordings from the user interviews and studies, members of the team individually performed content analysis to identify significant themes from the interview and interaction analysis to identify important details from the user study.
-
INSIGHTS
Schedules are easier to follow than frequent coordination
Compared to users who spontaneously contact their partners, users who have established contact routines (i.e. setting aside a fixed day and time every week to call or chat) report feeling closer to their partner.
Repetitive
Coordinating every time user wants to contact can be repetitive
Frequent impromptu contact requires tedious coordination
Compensation
Last-minute emergencies can lead to cancellations
Without any means of compensation, users feel disappointed
PERSONAS
We distilled the themes into two key personas, i.e. the key target demographics and how they currently call their partners. These guided the design of the final system.
Primary
Secondary
Primary
1/2
WIREFRAMES
Using Miro, we created a set of wireframes to showcase our conceptual design of a relationship garden.
USABILITY TESTING & HEURISTIC EVALUATION
Using our wireframes and the Wizard-of-Oz method, we tested the feasibility of our concept. We invited our users to complete a list of tasks while a 'wizard' controlled the elements to reflect the user's actions.
We also carried out a heuristic evaluation where team members individually reviewed the design and pointed out improvements that can be made according to Nielsen's 10 heuristics.
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE
After the group project, I decided to take the project further by creating a hi-fi prototype of the system using Figma. Adapting the original design, I created original graphics to represent the user's garden. I introduced a carousel system for the users to access the different gardens they may build when they use the system to contact different people.
bottom of page