Connect with Friends
COMPANY
Amazon
MY ROLE
UX/UI, Interaction Design, User Research,
TEAM
Joelle Leung
TIME & DATE
One Week – 2017
THE CHALLENGE
Keep a user connected to their core friends and family
Amazon asked me to “Design the simplest possible smartphone app that will keep a user connected to their core (top 6–8) friends and family members.”
Constraints
In one week, I went straight to research, interviewing seven unique users—diverse in age, profession, gender, and nationality.
After gaining key insights, I moved onto the ideation phase, creating several different ideas with user flows, wireframes, personas, and empathy maps. After some experimentation, I zeroed in on my final solution.
USER RESEARCH
Guerrilla research: First, I wanted to define “connection” as well as “core” in order to clarify the problem statement. Afterward, I discovered multiple pain points and chose one to focus on because of time constraints and the scope of the project.
FEATURES
How it works
01
Social insights in a human way
We gently encourage users to connect with family and friends. In order to keep the application fresh with new content, the "Reminders" and "History" will constantly change depending on your relationships.
02
Schedule a Chat
Users are encouraged to strike up conversations and stick to them with "Schedule a chat" which provides a fun and simple interface with suggested ice breakers from your social media connections (shared memories, interesting social insights, common interests, special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries).
03
Pulling from social APIs
The purpose of the app is to connect family and friends who have been out of touch or are falling out of touch. Sp the app aggregates data from various social media APIs in order to determine your tops friends and family.
ROLLING THE DICE 🎲🎲🎲
Wild Card 🃏
The "Wild Card" encourages the user to reach out to friends or family they otherwise wouldn't have and also creates an opportunity to build new friendships.
How is the "Wild Card" chosen? The app finds people in your social network who you've connected within the past and have similar interests to.
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
Form follows function
INTERACTION + GAMIFICATION
The larger the bubble, the greater the social interaction.
Gamification and play can work well when the goal is to motivate users. In this case, when bubbles are inactive for a period of time, they eventually disappear from the home screen. In order to prevent their contacts from disappearing, the user must stay in touch with their friends and family in the smaller bubbles. After each interaction, bubbles will increase in size.