Schonnect
Social media app for college students
Schonnect is a social media app that accommodates multiple students for video and voice chat anytime during the quarantine. This platform provides more communication and share opportunities for students of the same subject and interest.
BRIEF
Bring conceptual depth and richness to work, to provoke a personal perspective on Interaction Design
DELIVERABLE
Primary & Secondary Research, UX Design, Digital Product Prototype, Video Editing
KEY INSIGHT
Making friends has been a problem for college students. For college students, specifically freshmen, social opportunities are minimal as many campus activities have been eliminated due to social distancing protocols. Meeting and making new friends has become harder than ever.
TOOLS
Adobe CC, Figma
TEAM /DURATION
Individual - 6 months
( Fall 2020, Spring 2021)
OPPORTUNITY
How might we meet social opportunity needs for college students during social isolation?
Check out the video for all the features!
Process
PRIMARY RESEARCH
In order to better understand the social life of college students and their pain points, I sent a questionnaire to students from different college and randomly selected students to conduct a more detailed interviews.
Data from survey
I released a survey of college students at first and got replies from 7 participants. Understanding the social life of current college students by this survey helps me explore the use and deficiencies of social software and find user pain points to start right out.
6/7
Though Friends of Family, Friends or Co-Workers
5/7
Though Classes
2/7
Though Social Media
Based on the research, many students met friends at school or work, through shared activities, and through friends of friends. People didn’t have to put much effort and risk into collecting contacts.
But unexpectedly, some fewer people chose to make new friends through social media.
Unreliable, Unpredictable, Difficult, Inefficient...
This is the words participants describe their feeling/experience of making friends by using social media in the survey.
How might we provide more opportunities for new to college students to connect more and get advice?
This is my first statement based on the findings from the survey.
One on One interviews
To understand the reason people feel less trust on social media and how they feel in the process of making friends, I recruited two participants from the survey.
Nina
UCLA Graduate Student
Mathematics
Jack Zhu
UCLA Senior Student
Computer Science
Similarities between two participants:
01
Making connections with their classmates
"I often communicate with classmates, and then we familiar with each other, then became friends." - Nina
"I can meet with classmates often on classes each week or day so that I don't have to make time to go out and talk with strangers."
- Jack
03
Fewer opportunities to make friends or know their classmates through online courses
02
Hard to know people's personalities through social media
"I don't like to make friends on social media because I don't know them... I am scared of talking with strangers." - Nina
"No eye contact, no instant back and forth. I don't know who I am talking to and what kind of person he/she is." - Jack
"Making new friends, I feel harder than before. Because we couldn't see each other after online classes." - Nina
"At before, we usually hang out after class. But now, we won't talk to each other after class. Class is done, everything is done." - Jack
04
No direct and unified channel to get all the announcements and information
05
Unsatisfied user experience of current platforms
"Because we are working virtually, I couldn't find useful information from dozens emails school sent to me." - Nina
"I won't usually check school portal or emails so I don't know any events or activities to go then meet new." - Jack
"We have too much platform and everything is different and scattered. If I want to find feedback, I have to go different website."
- Nina
"Our school portal is **, I hate to use it but I have to." - Jack
SECONDARY RESEARCH
From primary research, I found people start to feel harder making friends because of the pandemic. Based on this finding, I investigated this change and understood how the change influence students' social life.
According to the National Health Council, depression and anxiety rates in the U.S. have skyrocketed since the pandemic began. Suicide rates and suicide attempts have also increased. The lockdown has no doubt negatively impacted people's mental health and poses serious risks.
Younger populations including teens and young adults (25<) are being hit particularly hard by anxiety and depression. In May, these populations were experiencing higher rates of anxiety and depression than any other single age group.
Anxiety rates for this age group were around 80% of screened participants . 90% of screened participants in this age group were also experiencing symptoms of depression.
"
"
Mental Health America Data Shows Impacts Of COVID-19 On Mental Health
“Loneliness and isolation” is cited by the greatest percent of moderate to severe depression (73%) and anxiety (62%) screeners as contributing to mental health problems “right now.”
"
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Mental Health America Data Shows Impacts Of COVID-19 On Mental Health
How might we meet social opportunity needs for college students during social isolation?
After I compiled all the findings, came up with this final statement.
During primary research, I also investigated the applications college students often use for social networking. The survey results could help me understand the usage of different types of app and acceptable social methods.
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Applications were mentioned during survey and interviews. ( Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Slack, WeChat, WhatsApp, Campuswire, Zoom)
I did more competitive research to learn what products is targeting college students social life currently. The possible competition industries includes social media, messaging, video conferences and education.
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There is a multitude of competitors that have approached needs for students with different methods, but not a lot that integrate the current unique situation for college students.
IDEATION
PERSONA
Creating a persona helps me communicate with the stakeholders who my ideal users are, along with their motivations and needs.
IDEA BRAINSTORM
Before move to design prototype, Brainstorming alway is a great step to start with. It could help me to come up with different type of thoughts and ideas. Some of these ideas could be crafted into original, creative solutions to a problem.
Before final statement
These are the brief but descriptive sketches which draw before one on one interviews. They describe 10 high-level directions that I considered to investigate my hypothesis.
Picked up 5 ideas from the draft sketch of brainstorm and moved them into storyboards that describe an end-to-end experience.
For the final statement
After confirmed the final statement, I selected the idea/direction that best fits the current statement in the previous brainstorming.
Interests Chat Room
Students could join the chat room which has the same interests and talk with them about their experiences. This provides a space for students to connect with new.
PROTOTYPE
With the concept and direction formed out, the next step was to concretize the idea. Prototyping always is a good way to help me explain my idea and do feasibility testing.
First Prototype
Efficient Q&A forum
Conveniences hangout room
I decided to design an application with an efficient Q&A forum for students to ask questions classmates and instructors and a video conferencing for students to study together anytime without making appointments with their classmates in advance.
This app also provided other feature:
-
View Courses
-
Major Announcement
-
Events
-
School Announcement
-
Course Review
User Testing
During user testing, I let them try the prototype and asked them several questions and get their thoughts.
Jack Zhu
UCLA
Nina
UCLA
Shirley
UCSD
Yoyo
AAU
Here are my insights/takeaway
-
Clearer classification of study rooms
-
Avoid course review comments from angry students
-
More opportunities to set up their own section
-
Organiza for their own posts and reply
-
Message to people they want to talk with
Second Prototype
Mood Tracking
Based on the discussion with classmates and instructor, I canceled the course evaluation feature on the prototype. This feature might cause unnecessary contradictions and conflicts between students and instructors. And the purpose of this feature does not match my problem statement.
At the same time, according to the results of the second research, loneliness is one of the causes of depression. So in this version, I added a feature that could monitor the possibility of depression through daily inquiries about students' emotions, and provide assistance to students who may be depressed in advance.
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But this plan was quickly rejected after more testing.
Final Prototype
Student hangout room with communities forum
When designing the final prototype, I experienced many overthrows and improvements to the different proposals. Finally, the final version was polished and tested with three participants.
User Testing
In the test, the participants were asked to do 7 tasks and I stood behind them and observe how they finished the tasks. After one task was finish, I asked them several questions and gather their confusion and intention.
"I love this app! everything is smooth and I hope my school have a app like this." - Dianna
The results of the testing met my expectations. All three participants said that the app is very smooth to use and the features appeal to users. Although there are still some minor problems, the results still were exciting.
Thank You
REFLECTION
What I learned from this project.
This project was my first 6-month project. I was a little intimidated at the beginning. Because of new experience, I chose a direction that I was not very interested in and spent a lot of time on. In the early stage of the process, my statement was in a state of changing back and forth. But as I got deeper and deeper into this direction, I explored and finally confirmed my final proposal. This process was full of frustration, but the results are exciting.
Based on the results of the last user survey, I still left some problems. If I have more time, I would like to improve the prototype to another level. These include the planning of the personal profile interface and improvements to the room length limitation. I hope that the final solution could help students reach the freedom of making friends.