To-Do

A long-distance relationship solution for couples trying to figure out activities to do together.

My role
UX Researcher
Roles & responsibilities
Sage Young - Team leader, UI/UX Designer, UX Researcher

Sabine Kwan - Competitor Research, UI/UX Designer, UX Researcher, Brainstorming, User Flow Mapping

Sam Quiambao - UI/UX Designer, Survey Analysis

Sasipornkarn S - UI/UX Designer, Competitor Analysis, Style Guide

My Key contributions
Prioritization Matrix
Competitor Research
POV Statement
Tools used
Figma
Scopes & Constraints
Completed within 24 hours.

Completed with Team across different timezones; coordinated to finish project together.

Process

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Brainstorming
Brainstorming and testing out concepts based upon the problem statement.
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Ideating
Taking brainstormed ideas and ideating them into a low-fidelity prototype. Researching competitors to see what our unique selling point should be, and deciding upon our in-app features.
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Prototyping
Prototyping our medium-fidelity prototype based upon the features we had decided to implement.

Overview

In a world where couples are constantly entering into Long-Distance Relationships. How can we bring long distance couples together?

It is already difficult enough to be in a long-distance relationship. How might we make it easier for long distance couples to stay connected - to maintain that spark that keeps the relationship going?
User & audience

Meet Fang

Fang is a full-time college student, who also works part time as a front-desk agent who is looking to re-ignite the spark with her significant other in her life.

She wants to engage more with her partner, but is having difficulty due to her busy schedule, feeling disconnected from her partner (because of not knowing about his interests, and how they have changed since long distance), and lack of interesting things to do with her partner (having been with him for a year in a long distance relationship.)

Problem Statement

How might we help Fang discover interesting activities to experience with her partner to keep the relationship alive?

Process & What I did
In order to determine what Fang needs - we needed to do a lot of research - mainly involving what tools those Fang's age used to keep in touch, research about preexisting long-distance relationship app tools on the market, as well as understand what Fang needs and wants.

Step 1: Brainstorming

Secondary Research
According to a paper written in 2018 by Soto Herara based on technologies used in long-distance relationships LDR users were more likely to use these 5 methods of communication to keep in touch on a daily basis.

These would be (in order of frequency first to last): Instant Messaging, Telephone, Online Video Chat, Online Audio Chat, and social media.

Although long-distance relationship users frequently used these technologies - cross-correlating with our team's primary research - it was found that couples did not find these technologies sufficient enough to have a sense of "closeness."

What was important for the couple included a shared space to share their thoughts, a collective shared digital space in which they could exchange what they had experienced within the day, share inside jokes, as well as spend time together. To a certain extent, digital technologies did provide the basis for that, however it was merely a medium for keeping in contact. Couples were looking for something more.
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Persona Creation: Identifying Pain Points, & Strategies to identify these painpoints.
Based upon our secondary research, we then started to define our persona, Fang, by identifying her various pain points and fleshing out her motivations, goals and interests.

After fleshing out her persona, we decided to form Fang's POV Statement. Based on the many POV Statement's we had enacted - we decided that the main priority for Fang was coordinating activities with her partner due to her long-distance relationship. Not only does she have to consider the drastic time difference between herself and her partner, but she also has to consider how to maintain her relationship with her partner amidst the many stresses of her life.
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POV Statement

Fang has a lot on her plate with schoolwork and her part-time job. Her partner lives and works in another part of the world, and she needs to find a way to connect with her partner apart from just talking quickly about their days and knowing if they are okay.

How might we help Fang find interesting activities to experience with her partner?

Step 2: Ideating

Competitor Research
In order to have a deeper understanding on how to distinguish ourselves from other apps in the current market, a competitor matrix was established where we compared other in app-features against others in the market.

Based upon our market research findings- we found that there tended to be a saturation of writing-based journaling-related couple apps in the market, but barely any apps related to date planning - particularly long-distance date planning. Thus, we decided to focus in that direction.
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Prioritization Matrix
Based upon our proposed prototype direction - we used a prioritization matrix to decide on the most crucial features to include in our app, and decided to focus more on features which are within the high-value scale, such as picking and selecting activities to do together.
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Step 3: Protoyping

Based upon the features outlined in our prioritization matrix - we started to design our medium-fidelity prototype. Our prototype had 3 main features: Room Joining, Picking Activities, and Adding activities to a to-do-list.
Room Joining
To do activities together, a couple has to join a room. Rooms could be created on the spot, or someone could join a room via a Room ID.
Picking Activities
Users can browse through various activities in the app, select which activities they want to do and save it to a To-Do-List.
To-Do List
Activities can be saved to a To-Do-List in order to do these activities later. Activities are ranked by level of difficulty, cost involved, as well as time duration.

Outcomes & Results

Overall, our team managed to successfully complete a medium-fidelity prototype within 24 hours.

Reflecting on the medium-fidelity prototype app creation journey - there were some difficulties - such as deciding on the initial idea of the app. Originally we were going to do something similar to an 'activity roulette' option. However, the concern we had with that was that the conversation would have been too forced.

To solve this issue, it would have been better if someone had acted as devil's advocate, or if we had tested our initial paper-prototype in person with couples. By implementing in-person feedback we would have been able to see the initial flaws in our original idea and act sooner.

In the end we decided to focus on just serving as an activity generator for couples as that was far easier of a solution.

Overall, this was an interesting project to work on - and I enjoyed working on this project with the team.

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