Keepsake

Prototype link: Prototype link (Please submit a link to a playable prototype, not a link to your design file) Link A link to your team’s prototype, whether that’s Framer, Figma or another design tool. The playable prototype must include at least 6 hi-fidelity screens.

A video demo with a maximum of 3 minutes: Please prioritize walking through the app you designed, explaining key features – information about your research and design process should be included in the free response answers

Responses to questions about the user research and design thinking process Describe your project (Max 150 words) Families often struggle to stay meaningfully connected as lives become busy, and distance and generational gaps grow over time. Conversations become surface-level, shared memories scattered across time, and opportunities to understand one another fade away. Our mobile application Keepsake inspires generations to stay in the loop about one another’s lives through regular media uploads and game-driven group video calls. Members of a family join an exclusive group where they can upload snippets of their day-to-day lives and view others’ posts. These snippets highlight potentially lost memories and spark conversations for family members to grow closer despite generational differences, fostering authentic, real mutual bonding.

Describe your research process and findings. If you conducted any surveys or interviews, please include the survey form and/or interview questions here. If you conducted secondary research by pulling from online sources, please include a link to your sources. (Max 500 words) We conducted 6 interviews featuring 4 participants in older generations and 2 participants in younger generations with the goal of understanding their experiences and perspectives regarding the communication styles, values, desires, and struggles amongst both their own and other generations. Additionally, we sent out a survey and received 28 responses from participants in younger generations, seeking to understand their family dynamics with different generations as well as what they believe hold the most importance in developing and maintaining meaningful relationships. Secondary research included this article that examined how grandparents communicate with their grandchildren. Finally, we researched three existing applications that aim to bring families together through storytelling and/or video calling. This table and all of our research findings are in this Figjam. Recurring major findings included: 1) Many emphasized the importance of having conversations beyond surface-level small talk, but struggled to have meaningful conversations due to different time zones, busy schedules, and/or difficulty finding common interests to connect over. 2) Despite being family, even when meeting in person, younger generations feel that their older relatives are basically strangers. 3) Both older and younger generations prefer meeting in-person, if possible–otherwise, video calling is the next best option. 4) Younger generations want to learn more about older generations’ lives, experiences, perspectives, and interests, as well as create more meaningful memories with them. Regular updates prevent emotional distance even when physical distance is present, and helps conversation flow more easily when meeting up in-person is possible. Bonding and connecting with someone are two very different things: digital connections often offer superficial feelings of closeness but real bonds are formed over intentional quality time and conversations. 5) Many older generations find keeping up with technology difficult.

Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions? (Max 500 words) 1) Video calls over audio and in-person meetups: Video calls were prioritized because they offer a richer form of communication while remaining accessible. While our survey results showed that in-person meetings are the most popular communication method, we decided to not focus on this due to the recurring pain point of being unable to connect with families because of geographical distance–⅓ of grandparents live over 50 miles away from their nearest grandchild and ½ of grandparents have at least one grandchild who lives over 200 miles away. An interviewee (20F) also noted that video calls provide her with additional visual cues, such as facial expressions and body language, which help her navigate past language barriers. 2) Adding a game mode: We introduced a game-driven group video call to encourage interaction and engagement from everybody. The survey revealed that the younger generation does want to spend time with older generations, such as doing an activity together, but lack common things to talk about. Around 85.7% of surveyors would like to create more present memories with different generations, such as through quality time. Additionally, only 1 of 28 survey respondents expressed disagreement towards the statement that creating new memories is more important than simply sharing life updates. They want more opportunities for open and honest conversations with family members. This feature provides family members with a fun, low-stakes environment to get to know one another without feelings of awkwardness or forced conversation. 3) Accessibility: Surveys and interviews revealed that some younger generations are concerned about older relatives struggling to navigate smartphones. To address this, we kept our interface design simple and with only three main functions in the navigation bar to reduce cognitive load. We also streamlined the sign-up process. A family member can send a link to another relative; they only need to click the link and confirm their name to join.

If applicable, describe how you utilized AI in your design process in detail. Please explain where AI fit into your workflow, which tools you used, and the specific purpose AI served at that stage. Include a concrete example of how AI influenced a design decision. (Max 500 words) We used Google Gemini to consolidate interview responses from our six interviews to more easily identify overlapping insights and experiences instead of having to look back and forth between the different interview responses. As a result, we found that many interviewees expressed they believe consistent, meaningful contact is essential for strong relationships, which led to our design decision of incorporating a low-effort, low-stakes game that brings family members together despite their distances, ensuring both regular and purposeful communication. Additionally, we used ChatGPT to brainstorm names for our application, providing the overall theme and features. This allowed us to focus more time on more significant aspects of the design process, such as the user flow.

Built With

• figma