Sending Love...

Inspiration

As a busy college student, I often find it difficult to keep up with all the people in my life. Oftentimes, I feel so drained and exhausted that even the thought of composing a message feels daunting. Although social media is a quick way to refresh connections via likes, shares, and comments, it often feels impersonal and cluttered. Although I couldn't perform extensive user research, I spoke to other students about this issue and confirmed that many students shared the same views on social media and that they also found it tiring/difficult to keep up with family and friends from home while in school. Given my experiences and what I have heard from others, I felt that a more personal and simple messaging app would contribute to social sustainability by making it easier for people to foster and maintain meaningful connections with the people that they love. This app gives users options to either pen a heartfelt letter to someone they love or to send them a cute virtual gift. This makes it possible for users to either send a quick gift when they are busy/tired or to send a more meaningful, heartfelt letter when they have the time. This solves both the problem of people not having the mental energy to reach out to those they love and the problem of social media being too impersonal and cluttered to foster meaningful connections.

What it does

At the home page, a user can select one of 2 options: Message in a Bottle, or Pigeon. (These options are intentionally meant to be a little cute and silly, to help associate a sense of whimsy and joy with the idea of communicating with others. This might help alleviate some of the sense of stress/fear that people like me associate with keeping up with and maintaining regular communication with others.) If a user selects the Pigeon, they can select and send a scheduled virtual gift to someone via (virtual) pigeon. If they select the 'Message in a Bottle' option, they can write and send a letter. Users can also view all the messages/gifts sent to them if they click 'Check Messages'.

How we built it

Challenges we ran into

Since I was limited to using the free version of Figma, I wasn't able to utilize the full range of available features. I was not able to make the text input submittable or use variables, which was something I wanted to do.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was my first time using Figma, and I learnd a lot about page navigation, consistent font sizing/color, and overall aesthetics.

What we learned

As mentioned above, I learnd a lot about page navigation, consistent font sizing/color, and overall aesthetics.

What's next for Sending Love...

I would like to add more gift options to the 'Send gift' Page, and I think it would be a cute idea to allow the user to customize the bottle/pigeon that they send out with charms.

Built With

• figma