| Caroline Padon | ||
|---|---|---|
| Project Name | Role | Year |
| Skillswap | User Research, UX design | 2024 |
Completed over the course of three months
Solo passion project
Inspired by conversations with peers and friends who spoke about their desire to have more fulfilling hobbies, and how they wished to feel more connected to their communities.
Making friends as an adult is hard
After graduating college, it becomes harder to form connections with other people outside of work. It's one of the most common complains among people over 25. The Cigna U.S. Loneliness Index in 2020 found that 61% of adults in the U.S. reported feeling lonely. Many adults find themselves lacking opportunity to connect with other people about common interests outside of work. Numerous studies suggest that adopting hobbies with other people supports feelings of connection, friendship, and community. There is research that suggests that gardening, gaming, book clubs, volunteering, and sports all have helped participants with forming meaningful connections with others. Sharing similar interests and hobbies with others leads to more opportunities for friendship, as well as feelings of belonging and connectedness with our peers. When we do things we love with others, it helps us feel like we belong. We feel more connected to people. This is not just a nice thought – it's proven by extensive research.
How might we create a space for people to share their hobbies with others and create opportunities for friendship?
SkillSwap is a peer-to-peer learning platform that allows users to learn from one another. This is accomplished in a two prong approach: Users add hobbies they’ve always been curious to learn, and hobbies they excel in. Then they are matched to people who can teach them about their desired hobbies, and learn from their expertise in their known hobbies. This model forms a learning exchange which allows users to foster organic feeling connections while simultaneously expanding their interests. SkillSwap is meant to facilitate learning and friendship by emphasizing real world applications for knowledge through picture exchanges, video calls, and in person meet-ups.
Messaging encourages picture sharing and video calls SkillSwap is meant to act as a facilitator for real world interaction and skill exchange
The decision to employ the double diamond design approach was motivated by the necessity for a comprehensive and iterative design process, grounded in testing and user research. This approach, which encompasses four distinct phases – Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver – fosters the right balance between divergent and convergent thinking at different stages of the design process, and supports the need for iterative design.
In the initial Discover phase, the objective was to explore the broad landscape of adult learning and friendship-building apps, thereby gathering wide-ranging insights from a diverse group of participants. The Define phase focused on synthesizing these findings into clear user needs and project goals, converging to a focused design brief.
In my beginning stages, I posted flyers around Austin, New York City, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and . I spoke to 23 participants, aged 22-47, about their experiences with making friends as an adult, and what they saw as the biggest barriers. I also spoke with participants about their hobbies and how it played a role in their lives. I was also interested in discussing other similar apps on the market, namely SkillShare, Bumble BFF, and Udemy.
I wanted to test my own hypothesis— could peer to peer learning be an untapped way to create organic-feeling connections online?
See my questionnaire and screener linked here.
For my interviews, I chose a multi-method approach. The recruitment phase utilized a purposive sampling technique, using a flyer as a recruitment tool which generated 84 potential participants. From these, 23 individuals responded to my request to interview them.
These interviews were conducted through video chat, harnessing a semi-structured interview format. It felt like the best approach, since it has the involves asking the same questions for consistency, but also flexibility for participants to explore topics in more depth based on their experiences.
In addition to learning about people’s experiences making friends in new cities, I also wanted to explore users' experiences with competitor apps such as SkillShare, Udemy, and Bumble BFF.
The data was then transcribed and subjected to a thematic analysis. This method was selected for its effectiveness in identifying, analyzing, and interpreting patterns of meaning (themes) within qualitative data. One significant emergent theme was the notable absence of peer-to-peer learning components in the competitor services.
The data was also analyzed using gap analysis to identify unmet user needs and potential opportunities for product development. The final step involved synthesizing these insights and distilling them into clear, actionable recommendations for product design and development, which was achieved via affinity mapping.
Affinity mapping, a technique used to visualize and categorize large amounts of qualitative data, played a pivotal role in the design process. It facilitated the identification and understanding of patterns, trends, and insights from the user interviews conducted. Following the transcription of these interviews, key statements and observations were written on sticky notes, each representing a unique data point. These notes were then organized on a large surface, and through a process of clustering and grouping, themes began to emerge based on inherent relationships and commonalities. The patterns that emerged showed that users felt increasingly disconnected from their peers as they aged. Surprisingly, this was often times because of technology. Many participants recounted feelings of jealously when watching their peers on social media, oftentimes adding to feelings of loneliness and isolation. As one participant aptly stated, “It’s especially lonely when you think you’re the only one who struggles with making friends. It makes you feel like it’s a personal failure, not a widespread problem.”
Other times, participants shared their frustration with existing apps. Apps like SkillShare and Udemy were lauded as ‘expensive’ and ‘only useful for LinkedIn’. Many pointed out that free tutorials exist on Youtube, so the existence of these services felt, in their words, moot.
Only Female participants expressed positive experiences with Bumble BFF, with all Male participants sharing they had never used it before. Those that had used it stated that they had an easy time finding people to hang out with, but often struggled to know what to do when hanging out for the first time.
Leveraging shared interests could be the key to cultivating new friendships
Based on the interviews I did, I learned that people are eager to make friends. The majority complained that they don’t know where to start, and they don’t see very many opportunities to make friends in their day to day life. In addition, 86% of the participants said they have a hobby they wish they could do more, and 63% stated they felt having a friend or partner to hold them accountable would help keep them consistent. This is especially true for people who have recently moved as well as people who work remotely.
Once I knew what the intent behind the app would be, and the problem it was trying to solve, I turned to my sketch book to brainstorm user flows and features.
After my interviews, I began to shift my thinking into the Define stage. One thing was clear from my research: online spaces tend to feel sterile and rigid. It’s hard to facilitate true connection with others when they are just text on a screen.
When approaching this problem, it was important to me that the design system was playful and encouraged exploration amongst users. I aimed to make it feel like a padded learning space, with lighthearted colors and rounded edges in every typeface.
In addition, making sure all goals of the user were connecting back to real-world experiences. SkillSwap should work to facilitate learning and teaching between users, with the ultimate goal that they are applying the knowledge they learn to their own projects outside of the online world. Encouraging video calls and in person meet-ups also works to prioritize connection and learning to users, rather than screen time.