A fuzzy companion to bridge the distance.
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Academic Project
INF1602 - Fundamentals of UX
Long-distance student couples often struggle to maintain emotional intimacy and connection due to conflicting schedules, time zone differences, and competing academic priorities.
These challenges can lead to feelings of neglect and dissatisfaction, and may increase the risk of miscommunication over time.
PAWSE helps long-distance student couples feel more emotionally connected by fostering asynchronous interactions through voice messages, and spending intentional quality time together.
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To better understand the struggles of long-distance student couples, my team conducted user interviews among 8 university students in Canada, 4 males and 4 females.
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How can we help long-distance student couples feel emotionally connected
despite demanding schedules and limited opportunities for shared experiences?
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With insight from user interviews, we actively incorporated solutions into our app.
Some were ideas that helped initiate the design, some came along during the process.
Our solutions of the Focus Timer and Message Recorder reflected our design goals.
The asynchronous nature of long-distance relationships often leaves partners craving a sense of togetherness.
To address this, our early design concepts centered around a physical artifact that could convey signs of life from the other side, offering a tangible reminder of connection across time zones.
After a few drafts of low-fidelity wireframes, we finally narrowed down our functions to two:
a Focus Timer that encouraged partners to intentionally put aside short periods of quality time,
and a Message Recorder that displays messages upon returning home, like a voice machine for texts.
We gathered usability testing feedback from three university students and an industry expert.
This process revealed that what we initially perceived as simplicity might actually be unclear.
As a result, we shifted our focus to finding the right balance between clarity and intuitiveness.
For the visuals, our team wanted to create an app that felt warm, safe, and cozy, just like home.
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