Design Lead
UX Researcher
Art Direction
Graphic Design
Graduate team project
Three-month in-depth research on long-distance relationships
2021 Sept - Nov
The smart EmBracelet is using IoT technology which lets users use our Mobile App to set up the settings and use the bracelet to let them communicate non-verbally, with the enhancement of Noticeability of communication, Physical Intimacy, and Uniqueness of interaction.
The product provides features like LED display, Vibration, Heartbeat, and body temperature. We have pre-set settings, but also, the users can totally DIY the interactions and the meanings behind them as well. The key point here is to create a "Morse Code" between themselves to increase fun and freedom. We think this way is one of the most efficient methods of exposing too much privacy.
First, we start a design problem with: "How to maintain your relationship stability or what are your approaches?" Then we conduct several UX research methods, including the Cultural Probe, Body-storming, and Participatory Design Workshop. based on the insights and findings of each stage, we make a lofi prototype for evaluation, and finally, get the future direction of our project.
The part below is divided into three parts, all of them are focusing on the research part, and this three parts/method take us around two-month full-time research conduct, the processes are complex for explaining, what I post is paying more attention to some key results, and if you are not interested in researches, you can jump to the latter part.
For body-storming, we conduct the secondary research about the painpoints of LDR, and based on this painpoints, we try to draw our persona and journy map, then we body-stormed and performanced the story out with our journy map.
The body-storming make us perform the role by ourselves which let us think more deeply about the situation that the potential users will have, and all the details including in can help us consider all the possible surroundings.
The Participatory Design workshop or co-design workshop as our most important process, it provides various and useful possible design directions. And the purpose of this activity is to focus on three question: Is there anything we missed or ignored? To get inspirations from the designers’ perspective. Explore more directions within different contexts.
The whole workshop runs around 1.5 hours, the participants enjoyed the whole process, and they provide us a lot of valuable insights, and at this stage, we are still not in the solution process, the goal of the workshop is also to provide possible design directions instead of the clear solutions, so our team can have more potential for the future solutions.
After the three stages, we developed three design directions/solutions, a bracelet, a automatic knit machine to quantify the interactions between the couple, and a fax machine that can send your handwrite etc, if you are interesting you can download our report to view. And finally we choose the embracelet, because of its unique value.
All three directions have their own focuses which are chosen from our design focus: Designed in a tangible form in which it can enrich physical intimacy. Enable noticeability of communication without an intrusion of privacy to increase a sense of security. Creating a digital or physical space that only belongs to them or recording the memoirs to enhance the interaction and connection. Enrich the form of synchronicity of communication by indirect expressions. And the bracelet is the direction that solves the most.
After making the lo-fi prototype, we ran a usability test evaluation, the weakness and the strength has been listed in the poster above, some obvious weakness like the demand of learning-ability in line with our assumption, overall our participants liked the design and idea very well, and the team thinks it is a valuable product to work on.
One of the most important reasons the team think is， during the research, privacy issues always pop up, and apparently, sacrificing privacy definitely can solve LDR problem in some way, and some couples are one-sided willing to share their status/locations for more intimacy, however, it will lead to more unpredictable problems, and LDR itself can be considered as a problem that can not be solved radically, this direction can be a good way to improve the situation in a positive way.