Sony & UCSD Design Lab

Worked in collaboration with Sony and the Design Lab to help solve disrupted connections and conversations during times of isolation

Note: As this project is under NDA, I am not allowed to share a lot of the details of this work. However, I would be happy to speak more on my role, the design process, and key insights. Please feel free to contact me to learn more!

Overview

ROLES

User Research
UI Design
Usability Testing

TIMELINE

Oct 2020 - Dec 2020

DURATION

10 Weeks
The Problem:
Building and leveraging networks during times of isolation
The Solution:
An interactive video calling platform that simulates real life conventions and events
This project was in collaboration with Sony and the Design Lab to work directly with Sony products to help increase usage with their products and screens while providing a solution to the ongoing challenge of staying connected during the pandemic. I worked with a team of 5 along with Sony designers and Design Lab mentors to tackle this problem.
I was primarily responsible for:

The Challenge

"How might we help passionate young adults who are stripped of in-person, natural conversations engage in meaningful and intimate discussions about community topics they care about?"
Problem Background
Difficult to meet individuals who share similar interests and goals during remote times
The pandemic has caused a toll on the ability to meet and engage with new people to discuss topics of interest. Whilst keeping in touch with existing relationships is still viable and accessible, it has gotten significantly more difficult to meet like-minded people in a safe and authentic manner.

Lack of deeper and meaningful conversations on significant or controversial topics
Likewise, holding meaningful conversations with people of diverse and differing backgrounds and opinions has also been a challenge during the pandemic. Whether it is due to a lack of time, lack of appropriate space and setting, or fear of unsafe and illegitimate environments, people are itching to hold deeper conversations with new faces as this is one key aspect the pandemic has stripped of us.

Research

Affinity Diagram
In order to consolidate our secondary research findings, we created an affinity diagram to help us move forward with a more specific problem space.
User Interviews
‍Who: We conducted 11 interviews within our target audience which were people who are passionate about a cause or want to spread awareness such as advocacy groups
*Note: Our initial problem space was "how to invoke more emotional appeal and willingness to take action when spreading awareness digitally", thus our interview group was very specific and niche to this topic. We were, however, still able to use many of the insights and feedback provided through these interviews.
Goal: To learn more about the difficulties and positives of existing methods, platforms, and apps that facilitate the spread of awareness and a cause, and to hear stories from both sides - those consuming media and those spreading awareness

Main Findings:
01
Social media platforms tend to lack greatly in credibility and trustworthiness; most users prefer to check news sources or discuss with people to cross check facts
02
High stream of polarizing news causes emotional toll and can be very overwhelming
03
Passive audience members feel that contributing to a cause in a remote circumstances would be less effective
After gathering and analyzing our research and data, we decided to divert to our current problem space, as we felt that it better aligned with our interviewees' sentiments and secondary research discoveries. We generalized our stakeholders to young adults who want an outlet for discussion and reconnected with a few of our interviewees to ask follow up questions in regards to our updated problem space.

Thus from these, we found that the main points were:
01
Social isolation prevents meaningful and intimate discussion about current news & other topics
02
Only a one way flow of information & a noisy and crowded influx of news and information
03
Skewed and biased information seen because of algorithms
04
Vulnerable to share personal opinions & fear of risking relationships from differing opinions

Design

We created sketches and wireframes to test with users to gain feedback for iteration. Based on our user tests, we made the appropriate changes for our high-fidelity prototypes. Our final prototypes were fully interactive, but unfortunately due to NDA we cannot disclose them.
Sketches
Wireframes
High-fidelity Prototype
Final Prototype Solution
Our final design was successful in solving and addressing our problem space. Our solution differs from existing platforms and consists of 3 opportunities that wholly addresses our problem space and user pain points:
A Centralized and Safe Platform to Meet New People
Greater
Interactivity
Simulates In-Person Conversations
Users can meet individuals with similar interests and passions or even those with conflicting opinions in order to carry healthy discussions
Like in-person conventions and events, users can move and choose which talk they want to join and listen
What currently lacks in many existing video calling platforms is the ability to have side, 1 on 1, conversations within the greater conversation
Our Performance
Our final deliverables were successfully presented and very well-liked by Sony executives and designers and by our Design Lab mentors!
"I love this problem space, so interesting and relevant... Excited to see where this goes!"
- Sony Researcher
"This is solving a bigger problem of lots of conversations at the same time; could lend itself to be on bigger screens, very exciting!"
- Sony Designer
"Really love the idea and design and great storytelling [during presentation]!"
- Design Lab Mentor
I'm very proud of our team for what we accomplished! It was a jam-packed 10 weeks but very well worth it in the end :)

Reflection

Key Takeaways
  1. Never settle for something that's not quite it. It's never too late to tweak your problem space a bit if it better aligns with what the work and data has shown. It will definitely require extra work in the end but it's well worth it.
  2. There's never too much user research. When diverting our problem space, our plethora and sufficient amount of data significantly aided the smooth transition. Not only that, but our follow up interviews provided great insight for our next steps.
What would I do differently?
Don't limit your scope too far in advance
I think a potential reason why we had to redirect our problem space was because we converged and specified our topic slightly too early. Spending a little more time exploring ALL the possible opportunities in the early stages is a great preventative measure on getting tunnel visioned too early.

Test our final prototype with our interviewees
Given more time, I would have loved to test our final prototype with our interviewees from our initial user tests. This would give more insight and diverse perspectives into how well our solution addresses our problem space and where we can further improve our design.
© 2021 by Stacy Kim