THE STORY
While many social media applications allow individuals to stay up-to-date with friends and families instantly, these apps might fall short of allowing an exchange of deep and thoughtful messages among people. In facing COVID-19, individuals crave additional love, support, and positivity through social media when in-person interaction is prohibited. Where can people find such a space to create and maintain meaningful bonds with those they cherish?
The application, Fletter, was designed to target this emotional need. Its letter-mailing strategy mimics the mailing systems in the past, where messages and thoughts take days to receive. Through this design, we hope that it would motivate individuals to construct more meaningful and thoughtful notes for their loved ones. At the same time, we expect the community will be filled with an air of positivity and support in fighting against COVID-19.
MOBILE APPLICATION DESIGN
POSITIVITY
MOTIVATION
CARE
INTIMACY
LOVE
PROTOTYPE AT A GLANCE
HOME SCREEN
SELECT RECIEVER SCREEN
WHY? The application strives to prompt users to show positivity and care not only to their close friends but also to those they might not interact with often. Research suggests that meaningful conversations would build a stronger bond and connection among individuals.
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Shows all contacts users have in their friends list
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Contains a search bar at the top
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Display contacts that users have not contacted for over a month at the top
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Display other contacts based on recency
MESSAGE WRITING SCREEN
WHY? The writing page is designed to allow users to concentrate on their writing. It has a similar UI design to other writing platforms to ensure that users have a high degree of familiarity (and less frustration, less effort to adapt) to this screen.
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The main page for users to craft their message
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Allows users to fill out the subject and the receiver section of their message
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Allows users to customize the text of their message
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Contains attachment, drawing, and other functions on the top right corner
NOTE
WHY? I believe showing an individual's true identity in a meaningful and intimate conversation is essential. However, individuals might not feel as comfortable sharing identifiable information when interacting with those outside their friend circle. The idea of the anonymous mode is to minimize users' feeling of self-awareness when writing messages to their community members.
Using birds as avatar choices derives from the project's original idea of "bird as letter messenger". It also coincides with the name of the application - fletter as "flying letter". Although my team wanted to emphasize the bird in our application, our user testing did not show enough evidence supporting that idea. Therefore, I kept the bird component as an optional flavor in this application.
BIRD SELECTION SCREEN
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Allows users to select an anonymous avatar
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All anonymous avatars are bird species with their species name and image displayed as a clickable component
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Contains a search bar based on key words
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This is an optional page
DESIGN CHOICES
WHY THOSE COLORS?
I selected brown, pink, and orange shades because I want the application to emphasize warmth, trust, intimacy, sincerity, positivity, and love.
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Brown - Resilience, security, safety
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Pink - Intimacy, love, kindness*
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Orange - Warmth, encouragement, joy
* Most of the participants in user testing reported pink or pinkish-red as the first color that came to mind when associating a color with intimacy and love.
WHY THIS FONT?
I selected Nunito as my font choice because it
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Is a modern sans serif font
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Has a smooth and rounded text body that resonates with the application's intended appeal
THE PROCESS
I re-visualized this 2020 team project individually in 2021. I decided to use this opportunity to re-evaluate my design skills and design thinking.
View the original team prototype in a new window here.
All user research were done in the original team of 5, where I took lead in persona design and user research & testing.
THE PEOPLE
I felt anxious, I don't know my weight, (I lose) self control, lose my standard for myself, and just eat whatever, not picking up the standard. (I have) no comparison, no constraints, no sense of time. (I feel) like I am losing myself.
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We targeted college students and young workers because they are the most likely to be mentally affected when their school or work routine was disrupted by quarantine.
Some interview questions we asked...
What are some major changes you have made to your life due to switching to online?
How would you say that social media has impacted your experience in quarantine?
Do you think your working strategy has changed during the quarantine time? How?
What are some ways that social media has affected your mental or emotional state?
Please describe how the transition and workload has impacted your mental health.
What are the highlights of your typical day?
2.
We want to learn the context of our people, their everyday life or work activities, their use of artifacts, and any pertinent events that have happened outside of our knowledge.
By digging deep into the student’s changed mindset from before to after the quarantine, we can find the sources of why they feel the way they do and how deeply this quarantine has affected them overall.
We asked these because...
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Isolation, Anxiety, Stress
They have a significant decrease in motivation and productivity
They have a significantly chaotic mind-set and mental state as to not be able to feel connected, cared and loved while all their friends and families can be reached through other social medias
WHAT WE FOUND...
They have a significant disruption in planning, scheduling, and daily routines
"I feel anxious. [...] I lose self control, lose my sense of self."
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
The sketch is the contextual inquiry of Darren - one of our key people. He showed us a typical day of his life in quarantine, and walked us through how he organizes his “new environment” to maximize efficiency. He is sharing a room with his brother, and this sketch indicates his space in his room.
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To see how the quarantine can potentially have a big impact on individuals' routine
To gather data about our people's living situation that may have gone unnoticed had they not been paying close attention
We did this because
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After we organized the info from our interviews...
Lack of In-Real-Life Interaction
Negative Feelings
Communication, especially in times of isolation, is a topic that can’t be avoided while working on a project remotely. we found that our stakeholders have also been using it as a news outlet.
We found that many people had to adapt to the situation by using video chatting apps, such as zoom, in order to communicate with one another. What our users miss most is interactions in real life.
We noticed that the sheer majority of responses was negative. So to further focus our data, we used "Negative Feelings” that encompasses subtopics like “Boredom”, “Anxiety”, “Frustration”, and more.
From our Affinity Diagram, we realized that...
Social Media
Need for Supervision and Collaboration for Work Efficiency
Prioritizing Work and School
Without the physical presence of authoritative figures or peer pressure from friends at home to monitor work progress or limit distractions, our stakeholders described a decrease in their productivity.
We noticed that due to the lack of physical environments aiding in the separation of activities, working has become the dominant activity in most of our stakeholders’ days. As a result, other activities such as practicing self-care have been neglected.
Daily Routines
Through our interviews we found that many have had to alter and adapt to their new environments while finding different methods to resume daily tasks.
Base on these findings, we decided...
WHAT OUR PEOPLE NEED...
Love, Care, Positivity
A DELAYED MAILING SYSTEM
Even in isolation, a deep, meaningful connection with loved ones makes you feel belonged.
2.
We want to encourage more individuals to spread positivity, so that people can combat the sense of isolation together.
What's more important is the depth and authenticity of the conversation, even if the pace is slow.
We design this because
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Positivity is created and maintained by consistent acts of love.
User testing shows that people who experienced delayed-letter writing were generally happier than those who received messages instantly!
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Honestly forgot about the whole experiment and it was a pleasant surprise to get a letter the next day.
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OTHER SCREENS
These are other prototype screens that were not introduced at the beginning. Please click on the prototype screen to see more detail.
My Reflection
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How can we make sure that users' messages are indeed "meaningful and sincere"?
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The short answer is that we cannot. The meaningfulness and sincerity of any message are subjective. It cannot be measured by the length, vocabulary choices, or syntax styles of the message. It is so personal and variable that the value of the same message can be different at every instance of interaction with the same individual. Given this consideration, we hope the delayed mailing system design would encourage individuals to be more thoughtful about their writings. The mailing system design uses time as a constrain to accentuate the quality of the letter. Time is valuable in that it is irretrievable, and it is equally limited. I hope this idea will thus drive users to construct messages that are independent of instancy or immediacy.
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Fletter's concept, along with all its user research and testing, was completed during the spike of the COVID pandemic. While it might be applicable during that specific time frame, how can this application remain helpful and meaningful beyond the COVID pandemic?
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I think we consistently crave love, intimacy, and positivity. The COVID pandemic puts significantly more stress and anxiety on our shoulders, amplifying our need for those emotional supports. Therefore, although Fletter's concept and ideation were created during the pandemic in hoping to solve a pandemic-driven concern, I think it still has great potential to remain meaningful beyond the pandemic. This application did not target the pandemic but rather stress, anxiety, loneliness, and other negative feelings that (unfortunately) exist all the time. Despite the pandemic, I believe Fletter can help individuals build and maintain meaningful and authentic connections with others and foster a strong, positive, and welcoming community.