Understanding loneliness

2018

School Project

MA Design for People

Designskolen Kolding

What is the oposite of loneliness? what does feeling lonely mean? What do people do when feeling lonely?

We kick started the course by asking ourselves these questions, and soon we found out the answers can vary a lot from people to people. 

With all the answers from the post-its I created the first output of the project. A web generator, a machine created by aliens to show humans that everybody feels lonely at times. The purpose of the idea generator would be to suggest ideas on how to tackle loneliness as well as creating awareness about it.

> Check out the idea generator here

After that I classified all the data from the post-its into different categories. 

As the research shows, the majority of people’s reaction to loneliness is reaching out for company, mostly friends. 

Therefore, I started thinking how could I help people make friends. So I thought that, since nowadays many people use the app Tinder to look for a partner, I though why not design an app to help people make friends?

I started researching the app market and I found out there are many apps for meeting people, each one targeted to a different age/interest group. Some are targeted for people looking for a relationship (Tinder and Bumble), while others are more targeted towards people trying to meet their neighbors (Nextdoor), people trying to meet people for business, etc.

I found there was a gap on the market. There wasn´t any frienship app targeted to the group I was doing my research on, early adults from 18 to 25. 

Then, I moved on to digitilizing my wireframes and creating a high fidelity version of the app. I used these for doing some user testing before moving to the final design.