LOVE IS TOUGHER
String
String is an app concept based on the idea of connecting loved ones over long distances. Friends, family, or partners, String is designed to contain everything one might need to maintain meaningful relationships, no matter the miles. Learn all about the thought process, workflow, and functional design behind String in this user experience and interface case study!
WHY STRING?
In this day and age, long-distance relationships of all kinds are getting more and more common. Whether it’s friends, family members, or romantic connections, most people have someone that they miss. I certainly do — some of my dearest friends and family live over 1000 miles away! The times in between personal visits can be really hard; it’s tough to know how much you miss someone until they’re states away.
We’ve exhausted just about every option to better connect across the long distance. The problem with those options? There’s way too many! The tools that exist serve singular needs, focusing on just one aspect of long-distance connection at a time. The number of apps to keep up with becomes exhausting, adding more strain onto these important relationships.
Born out of a desire to give people the tools they need to strengthen connections across long distances as easily as they would in person, that’s where String comes in.
PROBLEM STATEMENT: Resources for long-distance relationships are spread out across many applications and services. This makes it more difficult for people to stay involved over long distances.
PROCESS: User Research, Desk Research, and Competitive Analysis > Affinity Mapping > Synthesis > Persona > Branding > Wireframes > High-Fidelity Prototype
RESEARCH!
RESEARCH!
The first step in my research was to identify who I was designing for. For String, this answer is broad: The audience is anyone who has a long-distance connection; that is to say, quite nearly everyone! To narrow it down, I sought out participants who utilized digital tools and were interested in improving their means of connection.
AUDIENCE:
The target audience will find that the number of apps for keeping in touch over long distances is too great and that their functions are too narrow. I believe that they will forget, fail to find, or be too overwhelmed by the options to use all of the tools at their disposal. They will desire one inclusive, easy-to-use application to cover all their needs.
USER HYPOTHESIS:
Next, I moved into in-depth user interviews. I interviewed four participants, each one having passed a screener survey to determine their eligibility. I selectively chose participants with diverse experiences with long-distance relationships in order to ensure that a variety of viewpoints were accounted for.
USER INTERVIEWS:
RESEARCH GOALS:
Identify the key items that the target audience would like to see inside of a one-stop long-distance relationship app.
Identify what the target audience currently utilizes to keep up with each other.
Identify what problems the target audience faces with these existing applications.
Understand the motivations and thought process of the target audience to facilitate ease of use in the app.
Identify the key emotions behind the target audience’s use of the app to inform aesthetic design decisions.
AFFINITY MAPPING
Stressors and pain points:
Weather
Politics
Time Zones
Additional Commitments
Memory
Jobs
Existing tools in use:
Chat Apps
Video and Streaming Apps
Calendar and Task Apps
Workshops
Touch Jewelry
Motivations and desires:
Honest Communication
Quality Time
Intentional Connection
Humor
Hope for the Future
Reminders of Love
Overall, long-distance relationships of all kinds share similar struggles, and require similar tools and tactics to handle them. Users overwhelmingly expressed the value of their relationships and their strong desire to maintain them. Things such as time zones and geographic factors like weather can contribute to long-distance anxiety. Most users believe that these relationships require more effort than closer ones, but the effort is worth it to most. Tools like reminders, love nudges, and the opportunity for intentional connection are the most popular. Users utilize many digital tools to maintain their current relationships and showed interest in having these different functions in one place.
PERSONA!
PERSONA!
“It’d be nice to just have all the good things from these apps in one place so that it’s no longer a juggling game.”
BLAKE AYERS
Stats: 29 years old, lives in Louisville, KY, full-time high school teacher.
Goals: Find a tool to condense long-distance relationship apps into one place, maintain and improve long-distance relationships, organize and plan from a long distance more efficiently.
Behaviors and Habits: Works at a high school five days a week, tries to plan trips to see long-distance relationships every couple of months, does most of their chores on Sunday while on the phone with their partner.
Technology and Skills: Blake is proficient in both computers and mobile devices. They are well versed with the tools and technology available to them to maintain their relationships. This is primarily done through their iPhone, but they sometimes utilize computer websites on their MacBook to play games and watch entertainment. Due to being stressed with work and the requirements of personal relationships, they can be forgetful and can close themself off to new experiences, but they are deeply committed to maintaining their long-distance relationships.
Relationships: Lives alone in a studio apartment with two cats. Has a large extended family, spread across the country. Parents visit often. Has close friends in town as well as a best friend in another state. Has a partner who lives a few states away in a different time zone.
These empathy exercises paint a picture of what common experiences and struggles our users go through when maintaining their long distance relationships. Most are juggling the chaos of life while trying their best to maintain deep connections with their loved ones far away, which can result in a stressful and emotionally laden experience. With this insight, String earned it’s direction: An approachable tool that is accessible and welcoming to all types of people and relationships, focused on easing stress, fostering togetherness, and simplifying connection.
BRANDING!
BRANDING!
String was inspired by the concept of the invisible string, connecting us all, no matter how long it has been or how far apart. That feeling of togetherness was the main goal behind the brand. I crafted String to have a soft and approachable look and feel. String believes in the equal importance of all types of personal relationships, so the colors and branding were careful not to denote any one sort of experience.
A mindmap and sketches.
Accessibility is a core value of String. That’s why I performed color blindness testing on our palette to ensure that all users would be able to view everything clearly. String’s use of imagery is also designed to be as welcoming as possible to all users.
UX/UI!
UX/UI!
USER FLOWS:
The user flows served as my starting point for designing the wireframes for my key flows. These wireframes began as rough, low-fidelity sketches on paper, before graduating to mid-fidelity workups on Figma.
WIREFRAMES:
FINAL PROTOTYPE!
FINAL PROTOTYPE!
The final build of String focuses on the key points outlined during the user research phase: Intentional connection, having something to look forward to, staying strong, and keeping up with each other.
Intentional connection focuses on recreating common in-person experiences digitally, like book club, watch-togethers, and even recipe sharing.
Something to look forward to dials in on the planning aspect of String, such as shared calendars to easily view availability, hangout suggestions, and reminders to plan events.
Staying strong touches on the mental health struggles associated with long-distance relationships, encouraging users to maintain healthy habits by journaling and using Love Tap. Love Tap sends a notification to your chosen loved one and gives them the chance to send you one back, letting them know they are being thought of.
Keeping up introduces one of String’s primary functions, your Net. Your Net is what String calls your loved ones, your support system. String allows you to keep up with your Net via a mini social media feed, allowing you to share photos and status updates with each other without worrying about the prying eyes of the rest of the public, creating a more intimate experience.
These prototypes are a great starting point for String, but it won’t stop there! The next steps for String focus on usability testing in order to improve its ease of use and expand its diversity of functions. String will continue to expand with further flow development, outlining more of the app’s tools, improving with each new discovery — much like love, String will only continue to grow.
The result of this project is a tool that showcases the importance of maintaining connections and fostering togetherness no matter the distance. String brings awareness to the struggles surrounding long-distance relationships and offers the tools needed to cope with them. Overall, String is built on one core idea:
