WavePort

The goal of this project was to design something that helps capture and reflect on meaningful moments of the day. The “WavePort” app revolves around having a colour of the day concept which represents the user’s mood. Throughout the day, the user can capture moments through photo, video, audio, writing or drawing with the selected colour. They can keep their daily moments for their personal reflection or package it to send it anonymously to another user who chose their colour to be in similar shade. The received package is opened as a surprise and something to reflect or connect on with the user based on their captured moments.

The target audience is young adults from age of 15 to 30 who like to journal and emotionally express their day through different types of media. These users might also like other apps with digital journaling and mindful activities in which the “WavePort” can combine everything they like within one app. The app allows for a simple emotional expression with a variety of options. Overall, the goal is to encourage meaningful reflections in a fun and creative way. Allow a unique moments exchange system where users can connect through shared moments.

Before starting the design, a research was done by looking through the existing apps with similar concepts which included Locket and Finch. These apps showcased that users prefer quick, simple check-ins with minimal effort and having personalization to keep the engagements. The peers were also asked the reasons for not journaling. These included taking a long time, forced to mainly focus on writing, or feeling like a chore. Through these ideas, the rough sketches were explored with focus on designing the key screens, colour of the day selection, capture moment, sending package and receiving package. Each prototype was mainly focused on figuring out the layout of the different elements, and the navigation.

Based on the mentor session, I made a few key improvements. This included having a neutral colour palette for the background of the screens and buttons. This is because it would not steal away the focus from the main colour chosen by the user. It was suggested to look at some inspirations for neutral colour palette on pinterest where I discovered to have a background that can still meaningfully connect to the overall theme by using a neutral colour wavy pattern background. This wavy background can still connect to the name of the app as waves represent the connections made with others through daily moments. It would also represent the ‘port’ part because waves represent movement and port basically stands for sending out the packages. The interface was also a little confusing due to the wrong order of screens. However, the mentor was able to walk through the idea of prototyping on figma which allowed a better transition between the different screens through buttons. Moreover, through peer feedback, the idea of randomly sharing the packages was changed to sharing packages based on having similar shade of colour. This would allow the users to connect and reflect more easily to see similarities and contrast for their chosen colour through the captured moments.

The final design incorporates all the feedback given, leading to a clean, simple and colour-focused emotional journaling app. Firstly, the user chooses their colour of the day through the option of it being picked randomly or their own preference. Throughout the day, they can capture their day or moments based on what they believe represents their chosen colour through photo, video, audio, reflective writing or drawing. They can either do all of the options given or only some of them. Once they are done capturing their moments, they can also choose a song to represent their colour or day for a better engagement. Next, the moments are packaged and sent to another user with a similar shade of colour chosen. They can unpack the received package while the chosen song is played and look through the sent moments. This allows for a gentle way to connect with others and see the differences and similarities. The visual style has soft and pastel gradients, rounded components, and a colour-centric UI that changes based on daily colour chosen.

Built With

• figma