GLOBOND
ROLE
UX/UI Design, UX Research
DESCRIPTION
Being an international student, I know what it's like to be apart from your friends and families. The first year being 8,500 miles away from my family was tough. Having the same experience, I, Keming Li and Julie Kim had teamed up for the Catalyst Designathon to create an application that could break the time and space barrier to help people living abroad connect with their loved ones back home more intimately.
AWARDS
Salute Design Competition - Merit Award Winner
BU Catalyst Designathon - Honorable Mention
TIMELINE
March 24th - March 26th, 2023 (2 days)
TARGET USERS
People who have to travel abroad, far away from their friends and families.
TOOLS
Figma
TEAMMATE
Keming Li, Julie Kim
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Abroad Youth Struggle
with Loneliness
In 2022, 281 million international migrants faced common challenges like loneliness and grief, especially affecting young people.
USER RESEARCH
Expats Struggle with Remote Interactions
We surveyed 20 people living abroad. Our report found that 73% have stopped responding to calls or texts from friends and family, and 72% feel their interactions with people back home are worse than in person.
Have you ever given up texting/calling family and friends back home?
How do you rate the quality of communication with people who are living abroad versus when you interact with them in person?
USER INTERVIEW
Different Timezones Complicate Calls
Despite wanting to connect, receiving a call during a meeting is disruptive. Timezone differences make scheduling calls with someone 12 hours ahead challenging, as noted by our interviewees.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Technology alone
can't bring people closer
Despite technological advances, people still struggle with intimacy online. Our survey shows that Messenger, Snapchat, and Instagram are the top apps used to connect with family. Video calling is the most preferred method, with emojis and memes also favored for expression.
MESSENGER
PROS
The app is very user-friendly. There are a lot of ways to communicate with the user's friends and family.
CONS
The message could slip away easily. The users could forget to reply to someone. There’s too many people in one space. It's hard to navigate all of the messages all at once.
SNAPCHAT
PROS
Snapchat's functions are really engaging, and they tell a lot about what your friends are doing in the most recent time.
CONS
The app is limited when it comes to interactions between people that are in different continents.
PROS
The app has a lot of user-friendly functions that let people share there moments. People really view it as an archive to treasure their moments.
CONS
The app is not primarily built for real-time interactions.
How might we...
From the research above, we discuss the opportunities to leverage people's interactions with their friends and family back home when they live abroad. We used these three "how might we" questions to anchor our design thinking process.
Painpoint 1
The user feels confused by their friends' different timezones.
Painpoint 2
The user feels disconnected by the virtual world's lack of intimacy.
Painpoint 3
The user hesitates to share, unsure what to discuss with others.
How might we
Help the users navigate their friends' different locations and timezones more effectively.
How might we
Help the user feel more present with their friends effortlessly.
How might we
Make the user feel more engaged with their friends and family when they're living abroad.
THE SOLUTION
A Social App for Meaningful
Global Connections.
I defined Globond's goal as creating an intuitive social app that fosters meaningful connections and bridges emotional distance across time zones.
Shortcuts to where your friends are
One of the biggest barrier for users to connect with their friends and family oversea is they have to put in too much effort to find out where their friends are, and what timezone they're in. We want to create an experience that help the users effortlessly "see their friends" on the map.
Different places, similar moments
No matter where you are and how different your place could be, you'll always have some similar experiences with them, in various forms: every places have rainy days, or you'll have dinners regardless of where you are... By creating spaces for the users to share their similar moments in different places, they feel each other's presence.
Interactions starter kit
We understood that for our users, maintaining daily connections with their loved ones should be as casual as possible. This kit comprised a set of features and prompts that gently nudged users to engage with their friends regularly. Whether it was a quick 'Hello' message, sharing a funny meme, or initiating a casual conversation, we wanted to provide a variety of entry points for interaction.
Globond - Where the
entire world bonds together
Our ideation led to Globond—a social media platform for sharing meaningful moments with friends worldwide. We envisioned an interactive 3D Earth simulation showing friends' locations. Due to time constraints, we sketched multiple versions to determine the most viable design.
PROTOTYPING LOW-FI WIREFRAME
As we progressed with Globond, our team reached a phase where we sat down to brainstorm and enhance our app. Our goal was to continually improve Globond for international students and their loved ones. So, in these collaborative moments, we made tweaks and changes to the app to make it even better.
Direct users to the globe tab, instead of their profile
After careful consideration, we decided to direct users to the Globe tab immediately after signing up, a departure from our initial plan of directing them to the Profile tab. This change was motivated by our desire to prioritize the user experience of exploring where their friends are on the map, fostering a deeper sense of connection right from the start.
Center activities around actions instead of contents
Initially, we planned to use contents like movies, or games which people can choose to watch or play together. However, we realized that this didn't solve the time difference problem, and it dilutes the app's focus on connecting users. We decided to switch it into an action - centered hubs, in which people can actually do things together, which can be as casual as studying, cooking, listening to music, and people can do it together whenever their schedules align.
Add an AI-generated prompt on the feeds tab everyday
At first, the 'Feed' tab was designed for sharing 'moment topics,' but it lacked the desired engagement and informality. To address this, we made a significant enhancement by introducing a daily AI-generated prompt feature. With this feature, we now regularly post new topics for users to engage with. This addition not only makes the platform more engaging but also encourages users to connect and share in a more spontaneous and casual manner.
The globe animation
To make the user's interaction as intuitive as possible, I export a 3D simulation of the planet Earth out from blender, and create its interaction on Figma. I also create a background animation that represents the weather at each user's location, making it more visually informative and engaging for the user.
Hi - fi wireframe
FINAL PRODUCT
Connect with your friend
anywhere in the world!
After 48 hours, including a heuristic evaluation, we successfully delivered the MVP for Globond.
Experience where your friends are
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The user's connections are represented as 3D characters on a simulated globe.
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By clicking on them, the user can view their friends' locations, time zones, current weather conditions, and activities.
Stay connected with friends through live hubs
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The user can see what are their friends are doing in these "live hubs", which they can join right away and enjoy the activities with their friends.
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The user might interact with their friends casually and daily as if they're not a thousand miles apart.
Share everyday moments to friends under prompts.
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The users can share their similar experiences and moments under an automatic or user posted prompt.
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Even in different places, they can feel the connections with each other.
Never run out of topics to talk with your friends
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The user will always be notified whenever their friend is doing something on Globond.
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In the message tab, the user can navigate to find fun and interesting topics to discuss with their friends.
Feedbacks from users
After the Designathon, I conducted a user testing session with 5 of my friends who are international students. Here are some insights that I gathered.
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88% of participants reported that they enjoyed the smooth navigation and creative functions of the app.
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90% of participants agree that the app can really help them engage and connect more with their friends back home.
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95% of participants said they would want to download and use this app.
What to improve
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Participants have found the icons on the tab screen to be somewhat confusing. Adding a title underneath each icon could help clarify their purpose.
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The user was unsure about where to add a friend. The "Add Friend" function was initially placed in the "Connections" tab. However, I realized that relocating it to the "Globe" tab would make more sense for users, as that's where they typically navigate to find their friends.
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The user also expressed a desire for additional scheduling functions. While Globond primarily focuses on facilitating effortless interactions between users, I believe it's beneficial to provide more options for users to plan activities with their friends in advance.
What I learned from this project
I and my teammates really have some meaningful lessons working on this project together. The stakes were high to design something in less than 48 hours. If we had more time, we would think more about the product positioning in the market, and how we could scale it. Regardless, here are some big takeaways I got from this project.
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Iterate to communicate. When encountering any difficulties, we always sit down and iterates as much as we can. Through iterating, we came to understand more of our teammates’ idea, and that’s how we find the best idea.
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Be thoughtful, and be decisive. I really have a guilty please of designing something in a very short, restrictive time. It pushes me to really think about what's the most effective way to solve the problem, and to design the product. Spending time in research is really important, but I learned that I got to be aggressive when it's about time.
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Dream bigger for your user. A lot of time, people don't know if they even have a problem with something. Only when I showed them the alternative options for them to communicate with their friends and family, they realized how bad their experience were with other applications. I believe that as a product designer, I have to think about how can I possibly make someone else's life beutter, not just solve their problems.