Overview
Project As online friendships become increasingly more common, more and more people are experiencing a common problem with these relationships. Online friendships often have a tendency to come to an abrupt end. This often is done accidentally, but regardless, leaves people with a feeling of loss and hopelessness. Reconnect aims to help individuals who lost touch with their online friends in a safe space that reduces the risk of violating users’ privacy.
Online friendships have a notorious reputation for ending rather abruptly. Though there are several reasons why this happens, the most common case is when one of the people in the relationship suddenly stops contacting their online friend. Not only does this sudden disappearance create a sense of loss and confusion for the friend, but often leaves the friend with no other way to contact their friend without possibly violating said friend’s privacy.
Survey Responses
Interviews
Articles & Forums
SURVEYS
Key Finding: Privacy is a major concern in online friendships
To ensure I gained a general understanding of how online friendships work, I created a Google Form. Through the 50+ responses I received, I was able to gain more insight into how people lost touch with their online friends, what platforms they used to communicate, and their willingness to get back in touch with their friend. Additionally, these responses highlighted just how important privacy is in these relationships. Online friendships tend to be more secretive than in-person friendships, so the amount of information people had about their online friend was generally constrained to a name, username, age, and general location. Of course, this varied depending on how close they were with their online friend.
INTERVIEWS
Key Finding: It’s difficult to find missing online friends
I then reached out to a few participants from my survey to learn more details about their online friendship experiences and to have them attempt to find their missing online friend. As you can see from the video to the left, attempting to find a missing online friend is a tedious and difficult process that yields little results.
ARTICLES & FORUMS
Key Finding: Online friendships can end for a variety of reasons
While conducting my primary research, I began to wonder, just how many people are affected by losing an online friend? Well, according to articles and forum posts I found, thousands are mourning the loss of their online friend, even years after they disappeared. And most of them were trying to find a reason why their friend disappeared. Theories ranged from their friend losing their account information or to concern that their friend had died.
Based on my research, I decided I want to create a website that would allow people to find their missing online friends in an easy and safe way. So to gather inspiration and examine what solutions currently exist, I had a few participants provide feedback on a similar project, called Lostfriends.com. Most participants seemed put off by how outdated the site was and the lack of privacy.
After learning more about what participants wanted from something similar to my project, I then created a feature prioritization chart so I could prioritize what features would impact my users the most in a positive way. Most of these features are fairly common across social media, but there are two that need a more in-depth explanation.
In order for users to find their missing online friends, they will create a listing, which is akin to putting a missing poster up. Once posted, the listing can be viewed by other Reconnect users, who may be said missing online friend. This would an opportunity for them to contact the user.
One thing to note is that unlike LostFriends.com, users creating a listing will not have free rein to input just any information they’d like about their friend. This is for two reasons. One, it makes it easier for the developers to create a matching algorithm for profiles (mentioned next) if the algorithm doesn’t have to parse through large chunks of information put in the listing by the user. Secondly, if users were able to put in any amount of information they’d like, it’s possible they could reveal sensitive information about their friend to the internet. Therefore, I based the input fields of the listings from my research on what information users are comfortable sharing with strangers.
Users on Reconnect are able to find their missing friends by receiving algorithmic matches of users’ profiles and listings based on information on their own profile and listings. Unlike other people searching websites, Reconnect will only base matches for a user with information available in Reconnect. Therefore, sensitive information about a user that may be available on other sites will not contribute to matches nor be shown to Reconnect users.
These matches will come with a percentage, detailing how much of a match a user or listing seems to be with the information a user inputted about their missing friends and their profile. However, users are also able to search for their missing friends by manually searching for them, since some users distrust algorithmic accuracy or want to find their friends in a faster fashion.
Following mapping the architecture of the site, I created two lo-fi versions of website, each consisting of 26 unique screens. There were few changes between Version A and Version B, aside from formatting. I then presented these screens to 5 different participants who were asked to complete specific tasks using the lo-fi prototypes.
Key Finding 1: Combine parts of both Version A and B
Through usability testing, I found that users who were presented with Version A seemed to have very little issues navigating the prototype and completing assigned tasks. However, a participant from Version A noted that on one of the profile screens, it felt like “something was missing“. Meanwhile, on Version B, users seemed more receptive to the profile page, but more confused about how specific features, such as the features presented on the filters page, worked. Therefore, in my final design, I should combine the successful parts of Version A and B.
Key Finding 2: Make the site look “professional”
Though this was only a lo-fi wireframe, I was still curious to hear from my users what kind of design they expected from the website. The most prominent piece of feedback I received was that participants would only use the site if it didn’t look “sketchy” and looked “professional”. Having a professional-looking website would make them feel more secure putting in personal information about themselves for their profile.
Key Finding 3: Add a tutorial for new users
After participants would use the login page to sign in, they would be greeted by the homepage. This abrupt transition to the homepage, which has an abundance of information on it with very little context, confused them. They weren’t exactly sure what information they were looking at and how to get more or less of it. This created a great opportunity for me to create a tutorial for new users that would explain how the site operates.
