Bump
Bringing spontaneity to socially distanced audiences through 90 second video check-ins
Role
Visual Designer
Interaction Designer
Researcher
Interaction Designer
Researcher
Teammates
Alvin Jeong
Brayan Jimenez
Ryan Stephen
Brayan Jimenez
Ryan Stephen
Timeframe
8 weeks
Prelude
There are certain aspects of life that fundamentally weren't the same because of COVID-19, including the way people socialize. This was something my team and I experienced firsthand and therefore wanted to tackle.
The Challenge
How might we translate the value of physically shared experiences for a socially-distanced world?
Research
We surveyed and interviewed over 100 students to ask how COVID-19 has affected how they interact with people.
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Pain Points
From our research, we identified 3 main pain points and prioritized them based on how painful and pervasive they were.
Design Principles
Based on our pain points, we crafted these design principles to help guide us throughout the ideation process.
Personas
We developed personas to have references that would help us check if our solutions were going to help our target users reach their respective goals.
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Ideation
We brainstormed more than 60 ideas that solved for our pain points. Moving forward, we wanted to down-select ideas that best aligned with all of our design principles.
Down-selection
We eventually landed on Bump, a video chat service that randomly connects you to a friend for 90 seconds to emulate how you would bump into each other in real life.
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Storyboarding
It was important for me to be able to visualize what this product would look like, how it would function, and how users would interact with it via storyboarding.
Information Architecture
We wanted to map out how information flowed from one screen to another to help us understand where there were gaps in the user experience.
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Participatory Design
We facilitated 12 participatory design workshop sessions to help us identify necessary features and general areas where the user experience could be improved.
Prototyping
After three rounds of iterative prototyping to establish features and the visual language, we landed on these final designs.
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Bumping
We wanted to push for spontaneity by letting users initiate and receive short, random video calls with close friends and mutual friends.
Spotlight Video
We know that 90 seconds isn't a lot of time to catch up so we wanted to introduce spotlight video, a feature that puts emphasis on who you're talking to, not their background.
Adding mutual friends
A large focus of this product was helping users meet new people while in quarantine. We did this by surfacing mutual friends and making them available for bumps.
Discover Activities
Finally we wanted to introduce options for connection that don't require video/camera usage. Introducing discover activities, users can initiate audio calls or mini-games.
Success Metrics
Before actually testing our design with students, it was really important for me to be able to define what success looked like for Bump.
Primary
Increase in user engagement with friends outside of the platform post-bump
Secondary
Positive feedback from participants on the duration of a bump
Tertiary
Confirmation from participants that they feel more energetic post-bump
Proof of Concept
We ran 15 proof of concept sessions and saw overwhelmingly positive responses from our participants that aligned well with the metrics we outlined.
Reflection
If I were to work on this project again, I'd spend more time considering the product's technical limitations and how digital activities could further drive human connection.
