Loneliness can be defined as ‘the gap between someone’s desire for connection and the reality of their connections’.

The aim of this project was to learn how college-age students are affected by loneliness and design a way to reduce its impact.

The Process

Research

Design

Final

Whiteboard

Tutorial

Time Diary

User Test

Features

Interviews

Build

Next Steps

This project started by spending 5 weeks conducting research to better understand loneliness and the way it fits into our target audience's lives.

Loneliness is both a sensitive topic and difficult feeling to track. In order to triangulate our data we utilized three different types of research: survery, time diary and interview.

Survey

To help structure our diary study and interviews, we conducted a preliminary survey. We sampled 21 students at 5 universities and gathered information about their social environments, demographic / backgrounds, and experiences with loneliness.

01

How often do you feel left out?

02

03

04

Time Diary Study

In order to learn more about how our audience copes with and experiences loneliness, we launched a time diary study. We asked participants to track their daily activities and their corresponding levels of loneliness.

After collecting over 200 responses from our particpants throughout the week, we had a large data set to sort, clean, and evaluate. Through analyzing the data, we concluded that the highest levels of loneliness were recorded when participants were using various streaming entertainment services.

While the time diary gave us great insight into various coping mechanisms, we conducted debrief interviews to figure out why they felt lonely. By using the data from each participants diary log, our team was able to ask personalized questions about each activity and the trigger for their loneliness in that moment.

After completing all 10 interviews, patterns started to emerge in the responses and experiences of our participants. It became clear there were three main triggers for loneliness in our participants:

Triggers

01

Unavailable friends

02

Space between activities

03

New environments

“I have a busy schedule and when there is a lull in my day I begin to feel lonely so I like to watch hulu or youtube to fill my time.”

-U10

With the three main triggers in mind, we started brainstorming how we could design a tool to help. Collectively we came up with 60+ ideas on ways to combat loneliness in these settings. Through a series of dot voting we narrowed down our ideas to one, a collaborative entertainment experience.

With our system a user would be able to watch shows with friends, leave comments for people, and even sync all their subscriptions in one place. Our group chose this idea to pursue because of the unique way an entertainment experience could address the loneliness triggers we found in our research.

Whiteboard

With the three main solutions identified, our team went to work on mapping out how these features would work together, how the user would flow through the system, and what parts of the system would need to be tested.

Before making anything digital, we went through the process of building out the designs with pen and paper. This allowed our team to quickly make revisions, move things around, and work through some core functionality of our designs without feeling limited.

Design is an iterative process. The best way to refine your designs is to put them in front of the users, and do it early on in the process.

We were able to conduct one pilot test, and three 45min usability tests with various college students. This was extremely helpful in showing us the ways our project was strong, needed improvement, and was lacking functionality. We received a lot of positive feedback, and some really helpful critiques that helped us make a stronger protoype.

Build

Using the feedback from our usability test, we were able to build upon our paper prototype and translate our design into a high functioning prototype.

Setting up a gentle color pallette, and an inviting interface were our key objectives. The users need to feel cared for and at home when using this system.

In conjunction with my animation course, I made this quick onboarding video that simulates what would happen when a user is getting starting using Connect. It gives an overview of the main functionality and features of the system.

Subscriptions

Log into your entertainment services and Connect will aggregate all the shows and movies available to you.

Preferences

When you create your account take a short quiz so we can recommend enterainment for you.

Dashboard

Browse through shows and movies based off your preferences, recently watched, and friends activites.

Watch Settings

Choose if you want to watch the show alone, live with friends, or with friends comments.

Connected

Leave a comment, adjust your settings and watch live with friends.

This project showed me just how important it is to understand your users. If we had not spent the appropriate amount of time conducting research and really pinpointing what it was that triggered loneliness we would have limited our design scope.

I also learned that user's have expectations about your product before looking at it. Especially when it comes to an entertainment platform. Our usability tests help expose some of these expectations and helped us refine our design.

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