Knit

We began our process by first by identifying questions in which we would direct our research. Before having any direction with our project, we needed to identify existing problems that we could hopefully develop a solution. We knew we wanted to focus on relationships and connecting individuals so we initially came up with the following questions which we would use to direct our user research:

 

• Why do friends lose touch with one another?

• What prevents people from reaching out?

• How can we improve the way individuals maintain their relationships?

 

From this point, we dove into user research and conducted user interviews with young college students, whom we believed to be our target user base. We also conducted competitive analysis in order to determine what components were and were not successful in the product and app currently on the market. The following is a few of the questions we asked our users to learn more about their situation:

 

• Do you keep in contact with friends from your hometown/high school?

• What medium do you use?

• What prevents you from doing so?

• Describe the last time you talked to an old friend?

• What motivated you to reach out?

• Do you use social media and if so, how often and which sites?

• What makes you feel most connected to people who?

 

After examining our interviews, we were able to come up with three problems that disconnect individuals and their relationships. A few key quotes that articulated the problem many participants were facing were:

 

• “My Facebook has become filled with a lot of people I don’t know well….”

• “But that is hard because it has to be live and no one is awake at the same time since most of us are all spread out...”

• “The last time I really talked to them for a really long time was like two weeks ago, maybe...I’m not really sure.”

 

Social media outlets proved to be too overpopulated and impersonal for participants to keep up with the friends they wanted to. Cluttered newsfeeds from people they didn’t know well was a prominent point of discussion. Interviewees also mentioned that they could not remember the last time they had contacted friends, stating that busy work and school schedules made it hard to keep track of interactions. Several international interviewees stated difficulties regarding coordinating schedules across different timezones as well.