DAANIARAO
Joy, love & loneliness: FAM
How might we give back to our community more thoughtfully this Holiday season?
We as a team of 6 won first place for this Hackathon
I led the end-to-end product design efforts.
Secondary Research, Strategy, Ideation, Interactions, Prototyping, Testing, and Storytelling.
General Assembly arranged a virtual Hackathon for three days.
Problem
In the process of giving back to the community, how can we help and facilitate our community individuals to combat loneliness during the holiday season?
Focus
Individuals lacking family support around the holidays need a safe and collaborative space to provide them access to a loving and welcoming environment.
Key research Insights
I conducted secondary research, i.e., I read articles and papers for our team to understand how and why individuals feel lonely and what circumstances lead to loneliness. As the prompt for the hackathon was ‘Giving back during the Holiday season,’ I honed in on learning about loneliness during the holiday season.
A recent American Association of Retired person survey found that “thirty-one percent of respondents say they have felt lonely during the holiday season sometime during the past five years, and 41 percent have worried about a family member or friend feeling lonesome” (Kerman, 2017).
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Marginalized communities are disconnected from friends and family
“Thanksdreading: when you’re trans and dreading Thanksgiving dinner bc you’re gonna be surrounded by a whole buncha family that doesn’t know [or] respects your preferred name and pronouns.”
Our society has high expectations for this time of year. The absence of a close family seems magnified during the busy time when we’re all supposed to go to family dinners, exchange gifts, and enjoy jolly feelings with loved ones.
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Lack of platforms to execute plans during Holidays
“It’s not their fault; it’s the fact that nobody outside our community — with the power — saw the desperate need to foster an environment for us to be together during this time.”
Even if individuals might have a close social group during the year, given the timing of the season, planning dives when close friends are making plans with their families and finding a similar community is hard.
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Worry of being judged by a new set of people.
“I live-tweet the ridiculous and upsetting comments during the visit, I still feel incredibly lonely and isolated.”
Most individuals feel that they’ll either be attacked or judged for their thoughts if they are invited to social gatherings by distant acquaintances.
Design goals
1 / Make planning during Holidays more joyful, approachable, and accessible.
2 / Provide resources to support connection and collaboration among individuals.
3 / Make sure individuals’ safety and privacy are taken care of.
Design Solution
Key design #1
Get a seat on family dinners during the holidays.
Attendees can choose a time, place, or event where they want to attend an intimate and warm gathering.
Key design #2
Attendees can chat with other event attendees to learn more about them or collaborate with others in planning the dinner menu to feel more involved.
Design process
Phase
Exploratory
Define/Ideation
Objective
Finding the specific problem space of what the community is struggling with.
Discovering why people feel lonely, what they need, and how we might help.
Methods
- Team ideation
- Secondary research
- Competitive research
- Problem statement
- Persona building
- Competitive analysis
Result
Defined the problem space, design vision, and whom to design for.
Found the major pain points and our primary user.
Design
Exploring directions and variations and learning from what others did well. Turning the concept into a product.
- Defining design goals
- Wireframing
- user flow
Confirmed the concept direction based on the design principles.
Deliver
Iterating designs to produce the final product.
- Hi Fidelity design
- Usability Testing
- Prototyping
- App development
Built the final product with developers
Exploratory phase
Competitive research
We analyzed 3 products/services in a similar space of fostering community by introducing new people to each other and sharing warm experiences. We learned from what others did well and what warrants improvement.
Key Insights:
1- We liked Bumble's onboarding process. Its straightforward, friendly, and respectful tone makes the app accessible to all individuals.
2- One table had a great initiative of connecting their hosts with guests for Shabbat dinners on the website.
3- Airbnb offered a visually appealing user experience which fostered trust and confidence in users.
4- Meetup and travello organized events in a very understandable way.
Define phase
Building primary persona:
To better understand the needs and motivation of our target audience and hone in on our primary user, we focused on a member of the LGBTQ community who, based on the secondary research, has most evidently been affected by a lack of family support during Holidays.
Behavior:
Love to celebrate Holidays since childhood, yet feelings of stigma and judgment begin to surface around the holidays, ultimately not wanting to spend time with family members.
Needs:
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A Holiday support system
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Accessible and resourceful platform
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Openly discuss and share holiday happiness with like-minded individuals at dinner.
Pain points:
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A plethora of anxiety during holiday dinner with family
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Have a hard time trusting new platforms
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Lack of peer support during holidays
Design phase
Userflow:
Based on all the research, we thought to build user flow for a user initially using the app around some user experience design principles.
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Require users to set up a detailed profile for security.
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Provide clear next steps and facilitate the process.
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Engage the user's attention on the most critical things in bite-size pieces.
Users will follow two important flows if they sign up as an attendee.
*For the given time of this hackathon we decided only to create user flow and screens for signing up as an attendee.
Set up personal attendee profile
Sign up for a dinner
Low/Mid Fidelity wireframes:
We built wireframes and prototypes to receive feedback, iterate, and ensure the flow works. We refined design details to achieve the vision and goals.
We designed around below content strategy principles:
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The tone of voice should be warm and welcoming.
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The app should provide features for collaboration and connection before the event.
Setting up a personal profile:
- Attendees need to create in-detail personal profiles to help Host in accepting the invite
Choosing a dinner invite
- Filter the events to your choice
- Tap to see event details
- Read reviews about hosts' old parties
- Exact location of the venue isn't shared till seat confirmation
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A tool for collaboration
- Chat option for a conversation about event details.
- Menu could be discussed, and items could be assigned
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Final design
Building profile
Provides step by step assistance from start to create profile
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Includes multiple ways to verify user/host profile for additional security.
Discovery
Any additional questions can be requested by the host.
Easy event exploration based on dietary restrictions and filters
Before confirmation of a seat at the table, the host has the opportunity to review and verify the profile.
Collaboration
Chat could also be located through bottom navigation menu for other events
Chat option icluded for communication between attendees of the event
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Attendees have option to build, suggest or assign themsleve dishes for the dinner.
FAM prototype using React Native
We worked with Software Engineers to convert Fam into a functional prototype.
Within the given time frame and with technical difficulties, we weren't able to build a 'Verifying profile' and 'Collaborating on menu items' in the actual prototype
What I learned:
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Understood the differences between online and offline apps.
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Better form design: what should I specify next to UI specs for handoff
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Design decisions affect risks, costs, and development efforts.
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Involving developers in design workflow right from the start of the project adds a powerful new perspective to UX work.
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How to ask better questions from developers, and how to educate them to ask better questions from you
Reflections
I learned tremendously as a designer and a collaborator! We were a very diverse team of engineers and designers. We learned to work together to overcome challenges, adapt to virtual-only circumstances, and develop a design we're proud of as a team!
1 / Collaborating with Engineers.
I learned the importance of handing off organized Figma files with clear annotations for development. Additionally, I understood the technical difficulties that come with prototyping a concept.
2 / Time mangaement
With minimum hackathon time, I learned how we need to prioritize features to build an MVP that solves our problem.
3 / Design Process
I learned that the design process is not always linear and can be tweaked per the project's parameters. We need to innovate methods for ambitious challenges.