CoMe redefines social networking by providing cooperative puzzle-solving games as a solution to all types of social awkwardness. Rather than forcing yourself into small talks that are barely meaningful, establish bonds by helping each other out. Have fun making friends, and be fine staying shy! This is a class design project with the prompt of designing a social platform. As a team of millennials often found ourselves uncomfortable in traditional social occasions, we aimed to explore new possibilities of online social networking by seasoning it with fun and warmth.
Caylen Rhine,
Emily Wong,
Yumeng Fan
I identified problem space, defined product concepts through ideation, and demonstrated our design deliverables through prototyping by collaborating with my teammates. Then, I translated our mid-fidelity prototypes into high-fidelity mockups with graphics and branding.
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To develop a better understanding of what exactly is deterring users from actively engaging with strangers at social occasions or even friends online, we conducted a series of generative research. We distributed survey questionnaires on Reddit, Facebook, and WeChat, and we also reviewed content posted by users of Reddit, Quora, Twitter and Better Help to identify challenges people have faced with icebreaking and establishing bonds with strangers.
“Shyness” and “socially awkwardness” appear frequently when people describe their problems with socialization online. Nevertheless, there are many reasons why one may feel this way at different occasions. We sought to dissect shyness and socially awkwardness via our survey and study the root causes why people find socializing online to be challenging.
We observed in both of our research that one effective channel through which people have established friendships is gaming, particularly those with a cooperative nature. We then confirmed the positive effects of games in socialization through a second round of literature review.
Pew Research Center’s Teens Relationships Survey n=1060
36%
Met new friends while playing video games
More than
50%
Have made friends online
The question then, was what type of game is appropriate for our platform?
To answer this question, we examined genres of games that appeared more often in our research and identified the attributes that contribute to a genial bonding experience. While many are applicable, we identified cooperative puzzle-solving as our entry point since games of this genre provide a sufficient sense of achievement and room for inter-player communication, while they can be light-weighted to integrate seamlessly with additional social networking features.
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Before translating our UX solutions into low-fidelity prototypes on Figma, we first established a user flow model to ensure the cohesiveness between the gameplay experience and the post-game social interactions. We recognized the importance of incorporating a structure and interface resembling that of a general utility app for a smoother adoption by users who are less familiar with games.
With the mid-fidelity prototype that we created using Figma, we conducted 2 remote usability tests on Zoom to validate our design assumptions and identify areas for improvements.
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Along with the usability testing process, which was a collaborative effort amongst our team, I translated our mid-fidelity prototype into high-fidelity mockups to practice UI creation using Figma. As both processes took place simultaneously, I was only able to iterate the high-fidelity mock-up based on part of our usability testing results.
The key concept of the branding is “simplistic but fun,” for the interface to appeal to both users who are familiar with mobile games and those who are less so. I also illustrate the CoMe characters and visual assets with a simplistic and cartoon aesthetic for a similar purpose.
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Integrating game elements into a social networking app or similar platforms requires more than clearly defined and well-structured information architecture and user flows. Thinking about how users may interact with each other during the actual gameplay and about how those interactions can distill into post-game needs or even problems is critical to an effective and seamless integration. Through our latest usability test, we still observed usability issues regarding the gameplay and the gift exchange feature. If I have an opportunity for further iterations, I would aim for a fully-developed user flow for the in-game interactions including clue exchange, emotes, and chat. I would also work on optimizing the user flow for the message and gift exchange feature.
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