Introducing WAI
A complete UX journey into the way people communicate
the STORY
along with food and shelter, communication is one of the basic needs of human beings. But in an era where the illusion of human connection is at our fingertips, how do we manage to really connect with others?
Are we even listening anymore or are we just waiting for our turn to take the stage?
This is the story of a little project with big aspirations: helping people discover people.
the OBSERVATION process
noticing the lack of effort and empathy people pour into social interactions these days is what started this whole journey.
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observing these issues was what got me to conduct a little experiment of my own where, over a period of two weeks, I forced myself into social situations where I had to interact with people that I either didn't know very well or were total strangers and see how the process of having a discussion or getting to know one another goes.
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the experiment's result? no matter how introvert or extrovert one is or if the interaction is face to face or from behind a screen, people will always experience conversational blockages and the embarrassment that ensues out of them will force people to find adequate solutions.
the BENCHMARK process
this part of the process meant to gather as much external data as possible, in order to start the testing and validation of the problem, assumptions and hypothesis:
• reading tons of articles and studies about the psychology behind human interaction, empathy and active listening
• finding out what kind of compensatory behaviors people developed in order to cope with conversational blockages
• catching a glimpse of what others are doing in relation to the problem
the QUANTITATIVE research
being in need of answers, I turned to the most widely approached tool of market research and created a survey with twelve questions that was distributed along the targeted demographics.
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the survey gathered 145 answers and validated some of the initial assumptions.
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the QUALITATIVE research
following the survey phase, the next step in the process was face to face user interviews. Each of the participants was hand picked from the respondents pool and had to convey a number of specific characteristics:
• two thirds had to be women, one third men
• they had to be spread even across the age span of 23 and 35
• they had to be prone to socializing and meeting new people on the regular
• tech savviness was a must
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in total, seven official interviews were conducted and several unofficial ones took place during the entire process of this project.
the PERSONAS
after rounding up the data gathered from the qualitative interviews, four different personas came to life, each of them characterized by one of the Myers-Briggs personality types.
out of the four, one is clearly a detractor while the other three are either early adopters or part of the early majority of users.
the EMPATHY mapping
after creating each persona for the product, the next step in the process was to map their emotions during interactions, with the help of the empathy mapping tool.
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four dimensions were defined: what each persona says, thinks, feels and does when interacting with others.
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this is also where their pains and goals came to light and helped understand what would be the best solution approach.
the IDEATION process
bringing the data in front of the ad-hoc ideation team of five was, by far, the most fun part of the process.
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through personas and story-telling, the background for the exercise was set and everybody chipped in with as many ideas as possible.
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we started with four clear issues that our users have and split the exercise in three parts:
• the BRAIN DUMP where everybody wrote down each and any idea they had
• the BRAIN STORM where everybody concentrated on finding viable solutions to the problem at hand
• the VOTING where each member of the team voted for their top three favorite ideas in each bracket
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the last step of the exercises was to cluster similar ideas in to broader concepts and pick the one that fits the most
the PRODUCT
all the steps up to this point have lead to what was ultimately going to become WAI - Who am I?, a mobile app created for people who want to always have conversation subjects on hand.
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the app is structured in two parts, depending on the type of interaction one wishes to have; either face to face or at distance, with a person they already know or a complete stranger.
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besides everything this app is meant to be, there is, for sure, one thing that is not: a dating app, meant to help with pick-up lines. This app is for those who long for deeper connections and meaningful interactions.
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this app is for those who want to ask and be asked: who are you?
the WIREFRAMING process
taking the next step in the process, I began creating low fidelity wireframes. This has helped me explore very fast several iterations for each screen in particular and, after testing it with users, to adapt it based on the feedback received.
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during this step, I also decided what should and shouldn't be included in the first version of the app and came up with the best minimum viable product to deliver.
the USABILITY test
the last step of this journey was to test the prototype one more time.
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the testing was done with five users, some of them extracted from the respondents pool of participants at the qualitative or quantitative research, others seeing the app for the very first time.
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the overall response to the app was encouraging and participants seemed eager to become users.