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Spark meaningful conversations with curiosity, fostering deeper connections through AI.
Help users proactively strengthen relationships and navigate conflicts through introspection and a growth mindset.
Identify Problems - Relationships in Digital Age
Maintain meaningful relationships has become challenging despite our constant digital connectivity.
Loneliness is increasingly being recognized as a significant public health issue, with the World Health Organization (WHO) identifying social isolation as a major risk factor for mental and emotional well-being. While we are more connected than ever through digital means, maintaining meaningful relationships has become a challenge.
The starting point of SparQ is trying to understand the endpoint of a relationship. The first thing that came to mind is conflicts. Thus, we begin to look into how conflicts impact friendship and might cause dissolution.
Research First - Friendship Formation and Deterioration
Can you think of a friendship that never felt the same after a fight?
Decoding friendship formation and deterioration.
To better understand the dynamics of friendships, we conducted comprehensive user research, including interviews and surveys. Our goal was to uncover the underlying mechanisms that lead to friendship formation and deterioration. We focused on identifying the key factors that might impact conflict resolution, and why many friendships never fully recover after major confrontations.
Key Insights - The 3 Common Patterns
Growing,
deteriorating,
breakdown.
After research, we identified two key elements: reciprocity and trust. These two factors are interlinked and create a feedback loop.
The process of reciprocal self-disclosure means that people are having deeper conversations, establishing mutual understanding, and most importantly, they are building trust.
However, if mutual understanding is not established, some interactions might cross their lines and compromise trust. Then, people will withdraw from reciprocity, and the feedback loop becomes a negative cycle.
Eventually, the cycle will break and that’s when people have the “big confrontation”.
Design Decisions - Address the 3 Main Patterns
Let’s talk.
We want to encourage proactive communication to prevent big friendship talks. We focus on conversations, which are the main way people exchange thoughts and form intimate bonds. Conversations are also easier than other social activities to maintain regularly. Our goal is to build momentum in this positive cycle.
Recognize changes.
We all change, but we may not notice others’ changes. This lack of awareness can lead to a reduced mutual understanding, causing people to grow apart. However, staying curious can help rebuild that understanding. Our goal is to bring clarity to the ever-evolving friendship dynamics.
Navigate conflicts.
People mentioned how navigating through conflict is like finding a way out of the fog. So let’s clear the fog. But what is the fog? From our research, we found that emotions can hinder effective conflict resolution. We also learned that introspection and venting out to friends are the two main ways that people process their friendship issues. Our goal is to help people navigate conflicts.
Here comes...
The messy ideation process.
Design Process - Sustainable Interactions
Spark conversations through curiosity.
When designing the feature to facilitate conversations, we prioritized curiosity. We started with a simple idea: share a question.
Through multiple iterations, we aimed to drive engagement and provide relevant information. The final card design makes answering and sharing questions easy. We also show who in their friend group answered the question to interest users.
Not another social media.
Initially, we had a message center that enabled users to engage in conversations on our platform. However, we discontinued this feature to avoid becoming another social media platform that fragmented users’ attention spans.
While users can still share their responses on our platform, our primary objective is to seamlessly integrate these questions into users’ daily routines and existing habits.
This design decision facilitates users’ focus on the quality of conversations by allowing them to choose the most suitable communication channel based on their preferences.
Explore questions in a fun way.
Another way people can interact with questions is through exploration. We present a limited amount of questions for people to save it or not.
This not only provides a chance for the platform to understand users' preferences, but it is also a great way for people to explore their friendships in a fun way.
Design Process - A Fresh Perspective
Bring more clarity to friendships with dedicated insights.
As friendship dynamics evolve, it’s challenging to track changes. We consolidate friends’ responses and journal entries mentioning their names to provide easy access to information.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean clarity. Circle insights analyze journal entries and responses to help users understand their friendship dynamics, including current state, changes, and potential.
Design Process - A Moment of Introspection
Untangle thoughts through a series of questions.
Utilizing questions as the medium, Smart Journal addresses the intimidation of staring at a blank page to start talking about thoughts and feelings. This design decision reinforces the theme of curiosity.
Additionally, removing the background and adding an outline distinguishes the question and journal cards, making it less visually provocative so that people and focus on introspection.
We also make it easy for people to “talk”, as voice is a more natural and spontaneous way people express themselves. This design also went through multiple iterations to ensure an easy switch between voice and text input.
Feedback and insights that focus on growth and curiosity.
Keeping the habit of journaling can be hard. It’s time-consuming and often there’s no feedback, and it takes time to see the benefits. That’s why we give sparq insights after each journal entry.
It offers affirmation and a growth mindset, without intruding on the next steps. Instead, it helps people navigate conflicts with curiosity by providing a list of questions that can help with the situation.
Leverage the existing support network.
Remember that besides introspection, individuals seek feedback and guidance from their friends when addressing friendship challenges.
We aim to utilize the existing support network, enabling individuals to share their experiences and stories with their trusted friends.
However, there may be instances where individuals prefer to maintain the confidentiality of their close circle but still want to express their feelings. We also provide a channel for them to scream into the void.
Three core features empower people to build meaningful connections.
Let’s face it.
Changing is hard.
Why not have a little fun?
Gamification enhances motivation.
With the help of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), we implement gamification without causing the overjustification effect so that people can still be motivated by the joy of having better friendships instead of getting points and badges.
We still have an incentive system that encourages users to regularly interact with our platform features. By completing each daily challenge, people work towards their monthly reward.
The incentive system not only helps us generate content that’s more relevant to the users, but it also facilitates building new habits. The reward is also designed to support people to do what they’re doing but better.
Ask. Reflect. Connect.
SparQ fosters deeper connections with curiosity.
Key Takeaways
Identify root cause.
Empower users with tools.
Internalize motivation through gamification.
An effective solution requires a deep understanding of the problem's underlying causes, especially when addressing issues like loneliness and relationship dynamics. A critical insight was identifying the deterioration of the interaction cycle, driving the design decisions.
This design also highlight the importance of empowering users by promoting proactive engagement, introspection, and curiosity, rather than dictating how they should navigate their relationships. This balance ensures users feel supported and autonomous.
The use of gamification in the project is not just about adding game-like elements but is designed to help users internalize the motivation. This ties into Self-Determination Theory (SDT), focusing on fostering intrinsic motivation by facilitating self-awareness and trust-building, rather than relying on external rewards.
Designed in 2024.
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