A fuzzy companion to bridge the distance.
.png)
Academic Project
INF1602 - Fundamentals of UX
Long-distance student couples strugglw with maintaining emotionally connected. Busy schedules, conflicting priorities, and the limits of digital tools often make communication feel routine or transactional. Over time, these challenges result in miscommunication, feelings of neglect, and decline in relationship satisfaction.
PAWSE is a pet companion that helps strengthen emotional connection by fostering asynchronous interactions through voice messages and oppertunities for intentional quality time.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
User interviews were conducted among 8 university students who are, or have been, in long-distance relationships.
We would further synthesize our findings from the intervoews to define our problem and narrow down our scope.
"Having a talk on the phone is probably relaxing [for her]. But for me, it's kind of like a job.”
“Another thing is, I want to play video games.”
“For about half the day, you cannot talk to him because he's sleeping."
"We talk during her night time, which is day time for me, which makes it not a good time to work."
“We used to send each other memes on IG [...] but he has deleted it since, so there's a loss of connection there.”
"He games with his friends a lot, but I'm not big on games."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Long-distance student couples need a means to sustain emotional closeness under conflicting schedules and different priorities because existing communication tools fail to provide a tangible or shared sense of presence, which leads to feelings of distance and neglect.
.png)
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.
.png)
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, and serve as an emotional anchor, 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. Through testing, it is revealed that what we initially considered simplistic design actually appeared 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.
.png)
