clink

My Role

I led the project from concept to execution, overseeing both design and research. My responsibilities included conducting user research, synthesizing insights, and guiding the ideation process.

By leveraging my rapid prototyping skills, I effectively communicated complex ideas and quickly iterated on them to refine the user experience and driving the project toward its successful outcome.

My strong focus on visual design and craft ensured that the final product was not only consistent but also uniquely tailored to enhance the clink experience.

TEAM

Nolan K.
Vivian T.
Jalen G.

Alek G.
Hanna B.

Contextualize

Secondary Research
Interviews
Instagram Survey

Development

Motion Design
Visual System
Concept Iteration

Deliverable

Presentation
Ad Video
Poster

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Clink. is a physical social app that promotes genuine, in-person connections through the novel phone stacking interaction.

Clink. in Real Life

From our research, we found that people always need an excuse to start a conversation even when they are willing to.

Clink. physicalizes such intention through the stacking of the phones.

J.J.

This is my first time planning, recruiting, shooting, and editing an ad video with scene designs, script, and actors. Even though it's only a two-minute video, all the work that led to the shooting day was insane. I am glad we pulled through ; )

stacking phones together to view customized prompt

Phone Stacking

To encourage authentic connections, we want our users to put away their phones during the conversations. Thus comes the stacked interactions.

In this experience, users’ phones are stacked to make a centerpiece of the group. This renders the phone unusable, so all attention is put into the conversation. We want to reduce “phubbing” situations as much as possible.

J.J.

*Coincidentally, Apple released similar contact cards sharing interaction between strangers three months after the completion of the clink. It felt kinda funny to watch WWDC of iOS 17 and prepare clink. for my graduation show.

Algorithm Against Phubbing

Once a stack is formed, the phones in the stack communicate via NFC to combine the group’s shared interests. These interests, along with other factors such as time, date, and general location, are analyzed to generate a conversation prompt.

The effectiveness, or 'stickiness,' of the prompt is then measured, allowing the algorithm to continuously refine and select more engaging prompts for the group.

Phubbing

verb.

to ignore (a person or one's surroundings) when in a social situation by busying oneself with a phone or other mobile device.

*Explanation from dictionary.com

Second flow

Interesting encounters are out there in the world

Wayfinding

What if you can turn mindlessly scrolling of your phones into another fun encounter?

The phone stacking interaction required users to already be part of a group. To make Clink more versatile in other scenarios, we developed a wayfinding feature to help users connect.

J.J.

We spent quite a while debating how this feature could be delivered. On the one hand, we want to create a complete circular user journey. On the other hand, we need to consider very carefully about privacy, edge cases, false prevention...

Island Searching

What if you're in the dining hall, coffee shop, and feeling chatty?

In scenarios of users out alone, we don't want them to be stranded without any options. We added explore nearby feature as an active gesture.

From the home screen, users can initiate a search, and clusters—whether groups or individuals with similar interests—will populate the screen. Users can then select those they find interesting to request a clink'

Safety Settings

From our research, a big concern in creating connections with strangers is privacy and safety.

We want to give people the choice of whether to be discovered on clink. Thus we created the privacy setting screen. Users can customize precisely how far and whether they want to be seen.

*Considering our targeted audience and identity authorizations, we require user authenticate with university emails to ensure physical safety.

J.J.

Early in development, we also looked over history stack feature. However, the risk it pose to privacy and abusive potential outweighs the convenience it might bring to our users.

Research Process

Background

The prevalence of social media and digital content has created physical distance between individuals, resulting in less authentic human connections despite the benefits of increased convenience.

*Inspired by the documentary the Social Dilemma, we want to explore how technology has impacted human connection either intentionally or unintentionally. We want to see how design can be used in this situation.

Secondary Research

To contextualize, we conducted literature reviews regarding social changes in modern society and how technology is impacting socialization.

Our focus points to the socialization challenges faced by younger adults.

We believe that older generations developed social skills with minimal interference from technology, such as social media, whereas new technologies have played a dominant role during the social development of those aged 18-24. These technologies are often designed to be addictive, with little regard for fostering real, in-person connections.

literature review

College students said they need to socialize in order to thrive academically and that not having connections in their classes made it harder to reach out for help.

*Quote from the Best Colleges Survey

Strangers are not interested in spontaneous conversation.

Partly because people are skeptical of their ability to maintain these conversations.

*A recent study from the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Primary Research

Understanding the need to help younger adults socialize in person, we first conducted 9 semi-structured interviews with participants of various age ranges 18 – 56 years old. We want to understand how socialization strategies differentiate and if we could learn from more effective paradigms.

While most of the effective social strategies involve simply putting yourself out there, we received various responses otherwise. To understand more about this divide, we decided to conduct an Instagram story poll. We designed the questions to evaluate both the willingness to talk to strangers and what drives a successful casual conversation.

*People are much more willing to participate in online activities, we received 75 responses within the first 24 hours of publishing the questions.

intrviews

Interview

Young adults aging 18 to 24 have a stronger need for aid in social connection, whereas the majority of older people have already established a supportive community.

It’s more satisfying when people feel like they can contribute to the conversation.

*We conducted interviews with 9 participants.

Survey

"If the person is by themselves and looks like they’d appreciate some company, I would go up and talk to them."

*We received 75 responses from Instagram Story questions.

Insight

Based on analyzing the qualitative data we gathered in primary research, current social context, we came up with these insights.

Themantic analysis

J.J.

Initially we strived for non GUI products because we want to ask our users to get off screen more. However, the deeper we went with that direction, the more convoluted our design become. We eventually steered towards a GUI but with some limitations of interactions, stacking the phones together.

Crimes of Technology

Inadvertently, technology combined with disproportionally advancement in education has caused immense social problems.

human connections are no longer authentic for the younger generations.

Less in Depth but Authentic

To create less in depth but authentic in person connections can be as simple as sharing interests.

Not all connections have to be of high value.

What is Proximity

Proximity conventionally conveys difference in physical position, however, feeling close to someone can be more than just being in the same place.

Mission

How might we leverage connective technologies to enhance authentic connection in close proximity?

Who

Since modern technology affect them most and they were introduced with social media during their development of social abilities, we decided to set our targeted users to new college students (developing adults).

Targeted Audience

What

If not carefully executed, technology can exacerbate existing problems, such as depression, anxiety among developing adults. While developing adults feel the need to connect with people around them, the convenience of modern technology pushed them away from so.

Context

How

We aim to create an experience that help people discover, befriend, and connect with others organically.

Method

Storyboard

We initially focused on addressing this problem through a purely physical approach, intentionally avoiding any digital elements.

Our goal was to foster interpersonal connections through a gamified, face-to-face experience. By incorporating a card-trading activity, users could naturally initiate conversations, alleviating the pressure of maintaining engaging dialogue.

J.J.

However, as we continued to develop this approach, it became clear that the complexity of a purely physical solution overshadowed its benefits. While our aim was to reduce reliance on phones, a complete avoidance strategy felt overly passive-aggressive.

Instead, we began to explore how we could embrace technology in a way that enhances the experience without making it overly addictive.

Rapid Prototype

During our brainstorming sessions, rapid prototyping became an essential tool. Leveraging my prototyping experience, I quickly created mockups to bring our ideas to life. We were surprised by how seamlessly the combination of digital interfaces and physical elements created a smooth, enjoyable experience.

Iterations

J.J.

By making phones inaccessible during group conversations, participants' attention naturally shifted towards each other, resulting in more engaged and meaningful interactions throughout the session.

Flow Diagram

We first crafted for the scenario where one user wants to join or start a group. We quickly realized this is a scenario with many prerequisites, in public space and have groups of people around, that most of the time situation doesn't permit. From that we explored options like wayfindings, similar alerts to give users a reason to consider clink whenever during the day.

We aim for the feelings of "I feel bored, I want to meet some new people, Oh yeah, clink got me!"

Visual

Setting the project apart from conventional social media apps, we want to break free from the modern rigid look of the UI. Instead, we wanted our interface to be organic and welcoming. Considering college life, or work life, is already stressful, we plan to make Clink an application of laid-back vibes.

What if the app is like a reminder of retreat? I took inspiration from photos I took earlier on a trip to Hawaii and created island visuals representing individuals. We like the idea of individual users having their own island, so they can do island hopping. When two islands decide to connect, clink is the tectonic force that brings people together.

Reflection

Treating this project like a business pitch made me take much more responsibility than simply trying to complete a school project. A sense of goal and wanting to see the results propelled me through many difficulties.

Having to pitch to our VC (the professor) our slides has trained me confidence in speech and familiarized myself with how to convey ideas intriguingly.

As the PM of the project, I practiced a lot on dissecting complex goals into individually achievable tasks, and understanding the scope of the project, especially when certain things are needed to be done. I also learned a lot about managing workload across people and how to deal with problems when they arise.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to our friends and instructors who helped in this project in our most need.

Instructor

Nathan A.
Marie R.
Gino S.
Eduardo S.

Producer

Samantha Y.
Florent H.

Actress

Florent H.

Participants

Rhyan P.
Mikey M.
Riley Y.

Elaine N.
Kim L.
Christina W.

Nicole K.
Randy L.
Sabrina N.

Furthur

After our final deliverable, we received more feedback from further usability research. From the concerns, I made a few more iterations of the interface.

Iteration #1

Some of our participants concern about their phones' visibility when within a stack. This may lead to awkward situations where one accidentally remove someone else's phone from the stack. Thus I developed an identifying component that shows clearly who this phone belongs to.

Iteration #2

Because we used unconventional visuals for our app, we should be extra careful on signifiers and possibly have redundant explanations on certain tasks.