AdoRing
We want to connect LDR couples who are interested in maintaining both couples’ physical health and mental wellbeing while being apart through small daily challenges and by raising a shared virtual pet.
Our interfaces include a smart ring, an App, and include a voice UI and gesture feature to facilitate instant and short communication between couples.
Our interfaces include a smart ring, an App, and include a voice UI and gesture feature to facilitate instant and short communication between couples.
Duration: 4 weeks
Team: Wendy, Julia, Sasha
My role: Research, Design ideation, UX/UI design
Tools: Figma, Principle, Imovie, Rhinoceros 3D
Design Challenge
Due to the outbreak of the epidemic, most people choose to stay at home. The traffic is restricted, which results in more couples from different places can not meet with each other, so in this design project, we will focus on Long-distance romantic relationships.
LDRs are not common, but the distance affects the behaviors between couples look like. There is often an absence of tangible and instantaneous interaction. How to utilize available design and technology to fill this gap?
User Research
Interviews
We interviewed 4 groups of people to understand the potential problem in their long-distance relationships, such as daily communication tools, difficult aspects of building and managing LDR, etc.
Insights
Simultaneous Interaction：
Emotional connection plays an important role within a relationship, they tend to build this connection to improve their sense of existence in each other's life.
Create new experiences together：
Under the existing resources, couples mainly rely on voice and video calls to interact, and these interactions are limited to mobile phones or computers. How to create a brand-new interaction upon those.
Stay updated with each others’ status:
Because everyone's daily schedules are different, couples can hope to learn more about each other's situations and trends.
Competitive analysis
We studied some popular interactive products on the market, analyze their characteristics and the reason why they become popular among people, and hope to get inspiration from them.
Insights
Confidential communication and sharing
The snapshot function and "burn after reading" ensure fast and simple communication, as well as keep the content secure and private. Young couples usually need this kind of intimate and immediate communication for life sharing.
Cooperative interaction
Cooperative games, such as switch games, Animal Crossing, and Escaping room, are attractive for young people. Such games require both physical and mental commitment and mutual engagement. Partners can also promote communication and emotional input through cooperation.
Information sharing
Zeny is an app that you can track where your partner/friend is. It what the boundary of the exposure of everyone’s privacy to their trusted people, and part of that sense of security also comes from being open and honest.
Brainstorm
Scope down the design vision
Define key mission:
Designing an interactive product that utilizes a pet-rasing simulation game mechanism to encourage communication and build trust among LDR couples.
Early concept proposal
“Raising a virtual pet together” concept
We introduced this concept to establish an emotional connection through a mutual object. By letting a couple raise a virtual pet together, we can make it a bond between the two parties, enhance their interaction, and promote communication.
How do pets grow?
The well-being of the pet is based on the couple’s activities together, such as calling each other. At the same time, the reward mechanism can unlock the props for the pets they raise together according to the frequency of their communication.
The well-being of the pet is based on the couple’s activities together, such as calling each other. At the same time, the reward mechanism can unlock the props for the pets they raise together according to the frequency of their communication.
How do users interact?
The pet will show the partner’s states such as sleeping, working, and eating. The change of states can be achieved by auto-detection and gesture input from partners. The pet exists on the user’s lock screen of the phone and so the user can easily see it and get instant feedback on the partner’s status.
The pet will show the partner’s states such as sleeping, working, and eating. The change of states can be achieved by auto-detection and gesture input from partners. The pet exists on the user’s lock screen of the phone and so the user can easily see it and get instant feedback on the partner’s status.
Problems/Feedback
1. The main interaction carrier is still a mobile phone. Although the use rate of mobile phones is high, because of the rapid development of the app, the mobile phone has become a collection of all kinds of lifestyles, which cannot highlight the existence and uniqueness of this concept.
2. We focused more on how to promote their original mode of communication rather than creating a new interactive experience. If we only rely on this concept of cultivation system and do not pay attention to bringing a fresh feeling to users, it will appear too thin and lack product uses motivation. We need to seek different ways of activities input.
Design iterations
In order to solve the above problems, we have carried out another round of brainstorm. We question ourselves how to reasonably break through this physical barrier, how to seek different ways of activities input to deepen a couple’s emotional connection.
Main product - Smart Ring
In order to highlight the target group and design concept of the product, we separate its existence from the mobile phone. We choose rings as our main products. The first reason is that the rings somehow symbolize romance and love. The second reason is that they are small and portable.
Build a sense of collective
We kept the “Raising a virtual pet together” concept but changed the growing conditions of pets. We don't just want users to sustain relationships as their original way. We want to introduce a sense of cooperation, collectivity, and goal, so as to establish a life state of joint efforts and improve their participation in a partner's life
Physical + Mental Health
During the pandemic, it is important to maintain enough daily rest, nutritional intake, and physical health. Again, keeping mentally healthy is quite important in any relationship. We need to balance both mental and physical health.
Function Design
Define
How might we better facilitate a way of maintaining a couple’s collective and collaborative wellbeing whilst being in an LDR?
Design Principle
Information architecture for Mobile UX
+ App wireframes
Pick your pet, take care of it
Ring prototype + Character design
We made simple prototypes of rings with different materials, such as clay and cardboard, to test the screen size.
At the same time, we sketched many kinds of animal image drafts, constantly adjusting the details and complexity of animals according to the size of the ring and the user's visual ability. Finally, due to the limited size of the ring, we decided to use the 2-D illustration visual style and try to simplify the detail of the pet.
Information architecture for Ring UX
+ Ring UI prototype
Ring interaction includes voice control, gesture control, and touch screen. Voice control mainly is used to record the exercise time and voice input the task (exercise) completion status for the system. Additionally, voice control is used for sending a voice message to the partner. Gesture control is used for fun, drawing a heart to express missing each other. Screen interaction is used to view each other's status, select daily tasks, and view task progress.
Paper prototype test
We drew the UI of each ring on a paper strip and tested the user flow. During the test, we identified major problems with voice control interaction.
Give the voice command by
making a fist + saying " [Pet's name], xxx"
Specifically, it’s too troublesome to hold tapping on the ring to record a voice message. So we tested with different gestures and decided to use a strong fist + voice command to awaken the voice assistance. For example, by making a strong fist, the system will detect the pressure and activate the microphone, then the user says "Mochi, xxx" to give a voice command. We hope to reduce the fault tolerance rate through such dual activation.
Based on the feedback, we redesigned the voice user flow as shown below.
Hearing the voice message sent from your loved one
We also found out that the ring is too small to display the text of the voice message. So we change it to playing the voice message from the ring by putting the ring near the ear.
Concept Overview
Adoring aims to maintain both couple's physical health and mental wellbeing while being apart. We designed a "daily challenge mode" for a couple to complete it together, such as both people doing a certain amount of exercise or calling each other. We also incorporate a virtual pet for them to raise together and help the pet grow up by completing daily challenges together. In the meantime, with the support of technology, couples can have real-time interaction and send messages through rings.
the product is also committed to fun and interactivity and uses a variety of interactions, such as gesture interaction, voice interaction, and screen interaction, to promote communication between the LDR couples.
Concept Segments
Daily Challenges Mode
There are seven small tasks each week, including three physical health ones and four mental health ones. Couples need to choose one task each day and finish it together. The tasks are reasonably quantified according to the individual's physical quality. In the process of completing it, couples can build a sense of cooperation and collective honor, and at the same time, they can burst out new topics in life.
Virtual Pet
Couples claim a virtual pet together and help it grow healthily by completing tasks every day. The pet in the user's ring can reflect the real-time three states of the partner: sleep, exercise, and letter notification. Users can pay attention to their partner's life state through it, and gradually become their emotional sustenance.
Streak Mode
To encourage users to finish daily challenges, we introduce this incentive mechanism. Every time, the couple completes one task, they can get one streak. By accumulating the streaks, they can unlock different items for their pet to decorate.
Multiple functions - voice message/gesture heart
Users can record a maximum of 10-sec voice messages through the ring and use gestures to draw a virtual heart, then send it to the partner. In this way, couples can share real-time feelings or updated things with each other more easily and quickly, so as to promote communication and real-time interaction.
The systematic design across devices
Final Mobile UX wireframe flows
Final Deliverable
Final product prototype video
Self-reflection
Next step
User Testing
Better understand how interactions will play out between the ring and the user with a high-fidelity prototype
Expand on the virtual pet
Make the pet animal more interactive to enhance the experience. Adding items and customization.
Explore possible social features
Expanding on possibilities of longer-term and physical interactions between LDR partners.
What I should do differently
Collect more user feedback
During the design process, we should collect more user feedbacks and do user testing to verify whether the product addresses users' needs. For example, find out whether the user is used to wearing the ring; what are the user's feelings, and so on.
Focus on target groups
In the market research phase, our research direction should focus on the products used by the target audience, rather than focusing only on the products currently popular with young people. Also, we should not only focus on the positive aspects but also look for the pain points of products, so as to find opportunities and make more comprehensive design planning.
Consider usability
In the product design stage, we put too much reliance on our own intuition, resulting in a lack of practical consideration. For example, the choice of a ring as the main product is not evidence-based. We should consider more about the feasibility. For example, whether the ring can display enough information the user wants to see, whether the ring can be embedded with different sensors, and so on.
