Unlock stronger social connections through informed insights.

roles

User Experience Designer

User Interface Designer

User Researcher

industry

Social Tech

Health Tech

timeframe

Feb–Apr 2025

skills

Interface Design

Prototyping

Design Systems

Research

the challenge

Social technology promises to connect us, yet the more time we spend with it, the lonelier we feel.² Our devices, while undeniably powerful and convenient, interfere with fundamental social connections that make us human.

the outcome

GiGi reconnects people with what matters most: real world social connection

GiGi listens to user inputs regarding social tendencies, preferences, and goals to interpret their daily social interactions and understand how they compile and compare to their desired areas of social connection. Long-term data tracking visualizes social health, notifies the user when it is unbalanced, and recommends ways to reach out to others.

dive deeper

time with friends

Adolescents are on average spending less daily time with friends

Surveys like Figure 1 show that unstructured time with friends plummeted from 2010–2015 as teens thought they weren't necessarily losing time with their friends; they were just moving the friendships from real life to online.¹ However, recent studies have shown that too much time on social media displaces more meaningful social interactions, whereas too little time on social media cannot meet an individual’s need to foster and maintain relationships.⁴

Figure 1. The percentage of U.S. student who agreed or mostly agreed with the statement “I usually have a few friends around that I can get together with.” Rates dropped slowly before 2012, and more quickly afterward. (Source: Monitoring the Future.)

Figure 2. Daily average time spent with friends in minutes. Only the youngest age group shows a sharp drop before the 2020 data collection, which was performed after COVID restrictions had begun. (Source: American Time Use Study.)

number of friends

Adolescents have fewer and fewer close friends to spend time with

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points to the introduction and widespread adoption of smartphones, social media, video games, and high-speed wireless internet between 2010–2015 as "the great rewiring," a period where a generation of children moved away from the real world into the virtual.¹ With the great migration onto smartphones in the early 2010, girls and boys experienced a gigantic increase in the number of their social ties and in the time required to service these ties.¹ As shown in Figure 2, this explosive growth caused a decline in the number and depth of close friendships.¹ Or in other words, quality beats quantity when it comes to our relationships.

loneliness

The U.S. has undergone a major shift in relationships and the youngest generations are the most affected

In a 2023 report, the U.S. Surgeon General found that the highest rates of loneliness are observed among young adults aged 18–29, with 1 in every 3 young adults reporting feelings of loneliness.²  Figure 3 shows a dramatic increase in feelings of loneliness in U.S. adolescents during this time, with a continued upward trend afterwards.

Wouldn't it be an odd coincidence if the number of close friendships and time spent with friends decreased during the same period when feelings of loneliness in adolescents dramatically increased and it was all during the worldwide adoption of smartphones and social media?

Figure 3. Percent of U.S. students (8th, 10th, 12th grade) who agreed or mostly agreed with the statement “A lot of times I feel lonely.” (Source: Monitoring the Future)

visualizing

Visualizing the problem space

I organized the findings from my research into a flow diagram to begin visualizing the larger issue and identifying a problem space. I noticed a divergent space between digital interactions and in-person interactions, where the former overpromises and underdelivers, but the latter is too difficult and risky to warrant pursuing over the more convenient, easier option.

data collection and analysis

Having conversations and collecting  qualitative data to understand people's social behaviors 

In addition to my secondary research on young adults in the U.S., I had conversations around this topic with classmates and friends. Using this informal, qualitative data, I began comparing my findings between methodologies with ChatGPT-assisted analysis to uncover key findings and create common wants, needs, and frustrations of people.

creating personas

Using research to define personas and begin understanding the product needed by the users

Using key findings, I created user personas to guide product requirements and design. These helped me understand what the product is and isn't, giving me clarity and direction in the ways of target demographic, features, needs, and frustrations.

storyboarding and wireframing

Storyboarding to better understand the human journey and supporting it through design

Visualizing the journey of one of the personas in tandem with the product helps to understand how it would assist the user in day-to-day life. Early wireframes were a combination of Garmin Connect screens and new ideas I was considering.

hmw statement

How might we design a product that helps young people prevent social connection decline by encouraging the presence of stronger, more meaningful relationships and interactions to develop better social health?

an epiphany

What if we tracked our social health similar to how we track our physical health?

It was around this point during the project that I had this random but intriguing thought: what if we tracked social health as if it were akin to physical health? I'm a big proponent of wearable technology for physical training and recovery optimization, so I thought why couldn't it work for our relationships as well?

Imagine a wearable that can listen to, transcribe, and record your conversations and interactions with people, offering insights into your habits, balance, and weaknesses when it comes to maintaining social connections.

picking an approach

I evaluated potential directions to create a product that prioritizes ease of use, data analysis, and user privacy

Early product ideas explored ways to help users capture and understand their social interactions.

• Wearable: Offers ease of use by passively tracking conversations, but poses major privacy concerns and likely user pushback.
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• Journal system: Prioritizes privacy but is hard to use and lacks a clear system for long-term tracking and analysis.
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• Tracking app: Balances ease, privacy, and long-term insights with user-controlled data input to train AI to understand your social connection habits.

rethinking the system

A 1:1 conversion with Garmin's wearable system for physical fitness

I took the categories of anaerobic, aerobic, and high aerobic physical activity and converted them into social health equivalents, capturing varying levels of intensity regarding social interaction.

light  social

Effective but brief and overly abundant

Light social interactions are asynchronous and commonly disembodied ways of communicating with people that are beneficial for short-term connection. They are primarily virtual touchpoints that include texting/DMs and social media activity.

deep  social

Powerful and severly underutilized

Deep social interactions are synchronous, sometimes embodied ways of communicating with people that are beneficial for both short-term and long-term connections. They can be phone calls, video calls, or brief in-person conversations involving one-to-one or one-to-many interactions.

core social

The most important connections we can make

Core social interactions are embodied, synchronous, and beneficial for long-term connection. They are in-person conversations involving conflict resolution, vulnerable sharing, and caregiving conversations.

terminology

I created a system with which to define the interactions we have throughout the day

Borrowing some terms defined by Jonathan Haidt, I defined my three categories of social interaction based on where they lie on a scale of entirely virtual interaction to fully in-person conversation. There are a myriad of ways in which we connect with people, but not all of them yield the same desired results that they're promised.

architecture

I mapped out the features and functionality I imagined would be necessary to making GiGi impactful

Beginning by recreating the key features in the Garmin Connect app, GiGi slowly grew in complexity as I envisioned more features to support the problem space I was looking to address. Visualizing the architecture helped me layout the user flow and understand where each feature would fit in the larger picture.

rethinking systems

A system created to categorize and analyze social connection

We live in an extraordinary time with an abundance of methods to connect with the people we care about. Utilizing Garmin's system to track physical fitness and terminology highlighted by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, GiGi operates using a system to help users define, categorize, and analyze the social interactions they have. 

data visualization

Tracking data over time and visualizing it help the user identify trends

Long-term data tracking allows users to visualize and identify trends in their social behavior, providing them with the knowledge and awareness to know when too much digital connection is affecting their real world relationships.

recommendations & insights

Identify imbalances in recent social behavior and recommend strategies to improve

The goal of this app is to encourage individuals to connect better with the important people in their lives and not to rely overly on digital mediums to accomplish their socializing. If it detects that you're relying too heavily on virtual connections to fulfill your daily requirements, it will recommend methods and contacts you can reach out to in order to rebalance your social focus.

contact profiles

Recognize your social habits with different contacts and identify areas you'd like to improve in

By giving each contact a breakdown of social interaction tiers, the user can understand how their daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly habits of socializing disperse amongst people they try to stay in touch with. GiGi introduces the idea of "social circles," giving a user a breakdown of where contacts reside based on the level of social connection maintained with them.

thinking ahead

If I had more time I would...

Social health, connection, and an individual's preference for adequate contact with other humans are highly subjective.

• Collect user research data through questionnaires and interviews with young adults to understand how the secondary research I've conducted matches with the lives of the people I've observed.
  
• Develop a higher fidelity prototype and conduct usability testing on my prototype to see how people interpret the onboarding process and understand new use cases.

how did ai assist?

ChatGPT helped solidify and ideate on initial ideas and conceptualize the framework. Lovable helped visualize the skeleton

Working back and forth with ChatGPT helped me nail down my initial interaction framework and put into words the ideas that were floating in my head. From there, I dove into specificity and fixed up some of the language and categorizing that was far too generic and lacked authenticity.

When creating the UI, I had already started by translating Garmin's design system into my own, copying their layout, features, and functionality while translating them into social health language and terminology. Lovable helped me to generate some lingering screens that I wasn't able to visualize easily, such as the tracking screen.

sources

References

1. Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press, 2024.
2. Murthy, Vivek H. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2023.
3. Roberts, J. A., Young, P. D., and David, M. E. "The Epidemic of Loneliness: A 9-Year Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Passive and Active Social Media Use on Loneliness." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241295870.
4. Zhang, Libing et al. “Social Networking Site Use and Loneliness: A Meta-Analysis.” The Journal of psychology vol. 156,7 (2022): 492-511. doi:10.1080/00223980.2022.2101420.
   
   
   

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