HappiLink
Reducing homesickness and fear of judgement by empowering international students to form meaningful connections within a culturally diverse environment.

OVERVIEW

For the interaction design studio major project, we addressed a brief related to cultural awareness & harmony, particularly focused on the experiences of International students in Australia.  

I was highly involved in the end-to-end design process, from conducting interviews and online ethnography, facilitating user testing sessions, designing mockups & prototyping interactions for the app and apple watch.

ROLE

User Researcher, Product Designer

TEAM MEMBERS

Purvi Bothra + 2 Team Members

DURATION

Aug - Nov 2023, 13 weeks

ACHIEVEMENTS

Highest mark in the cohort for final prototype presentation & documentation.

⭐️ Click to view accolade

💡 Solution

A cultural meet-up app with an apple watch component, facilitating international students to connect with their own culture when homesick, or expand their comfort zone to link with new cultures.
Where starting a new chapter of life doesn't need to be so difficult.
Easing the anxiety associated with meet-ups by creating a (happi) friend chain link.
Allowing users to invite students they already know to events & sync schedules to lessen the discomfort of meeting new people alone.
Empowering students to share meaningful experiences & build community.
Recording experiences of fun events using event diaries on the app & apple watch, where choosing to share with new friends positively influences other students to participate.
Timed event recommendations on-the-go.
The Apple Watch component also notifies users of personalised events aligning to their preferences, ensuring they never miss a good opportunity for forming bonds.
Event reminders to remind users of the power of building connections.
Setting up positive event alert reminders to keep users up-to-date and ready to make new friends and make the most of their experience abroad.
Prototype Link
Design process at a glance (a structure that is not always followed in structure...)
The double diamond approach.

📌 The Problem

There is a limited understanding of International students’ accultural difficulties and ability to navigate cultural identity and social mingling in an unfamiliar place.
Languge barriers, culture shocks, disconnection... what exactly makes International students feel lonely and lost?

Discovery

Previous research found that international students experience exclusion & loneliness, leading to social withdrawal.
Research finds that many International students face a range of challenges.
  • 😓 Will I fit in? Will I be accepted?
  • 👥 What will local students think of me if I can't communicate well?
  • 🏠 Will I even like it here?

😢 Loneliness

35%

of international students in Australia felt feelings of loneliness & exclusion
(Morris et al., 2020)

👥 Social inability

47%

of international students found it difficult to form friendships.
(Morris et al., 2020)

👤 Social exclusion

“International students form a parallel society made up of fellow international students that has no clear connections to Australian society or culture”

(Gomes, 2022).
This culminated in a few hypotheses: that this was impacting students who were more prone to being shy or anxious, that students felt cultural shock in the social culture, and loneliness was felt more deeply by the actively marginalised.
💡 Learnings: When commencing initial desktop research, we found that there were multiple related problem scenarios (such as culture shock, discrimination, language barriers). I learned that communicating early with the team to focus on one problem would streamline the process and ensure our research was profound and focussed.

Research Approach

But previous research hadn't uncovered the depth of international students' accultural difficulties, so we designed a plan to draw deeper insights.
Research objective & research questions mindmap.

Research Methods

We decided to explore wide to gage a general consensus, & explore deep into individual students' experiences and emotions.

💻  Explorative Questionnaire

56 responses | 19 nationalities | aged 17-26
Questionnaires were used to gain a broad understanding of common attitudes and behaviours among  students and provide statistical significance to qualitative insights.
Snippet of survey questions

🗣  Semi-structured user interviews

8 students | 6 nationalities | aged 19-24
Interviews dived into individual student experiences to understand core motivations and frustrations in socially adapting to a culturally unfamiliar environment.
Snippet of interview transcripts

🔍  Online ethnography

21 sources | 4 platforms
Accounting for the broad cultural diversity of International students in Australia, a range of experiences from accessible online forums were analysed and evaluated.
Snippet of online ethnography analysis table
💡 Learnings: Although our team was able to triangulate research, in the future I would take time to conduct more interviews & recruit survey participants to help us further enrich our understanding, as experiences of International students can largely differ depending on several variable factors.
Bottom-up affinity diagram to synthesise & categorise key research findings,

Key Insights

Insights from users challenged our assumptions: accultural difficulties are experienced differently for students at different stages of their journey.
After synthesising and analysing our key findings through a bottom-up affinity diagram, we identified 3 key insights related to international students' experiences, helping define our problem and challenging our initial hypotheses that it was only impacting a specific demographic of international students.
Navigating cultural differences
New international students experience homesickness, influencing them in connecting more with their own culture.

“There are certain behaviours that are normalised here that would mean something completely different in my home country.” - Online ethnographic source

- 67% of students have experienced homesickness since arriving in Australia.

The cultural comfort zone
International students are initially more comfortable interacting with their own culture due to cultural barriers and homesickness.

“I tend to be myself most when I’m with people of my own culture” - Winnie, 19, B. Business

- 64% of students feel comfortable socialising with people of similar cultures.

Expanding the cultural comfort   zone
Acclimatised International students seek to interact with other cultures for self-growth, but find it difficult to interact with those who are not as willing.

“You'll see that a group of international students from Indonesia tend to have a primarily Indonesian friend circle. It's really hard to talk to those people.” - Raghav, Indian, M. Marketing

- 44% of students are open to interacting with other cultures in Australia.

💡 Learnings: With the quantity of data, our team used an affinity map for drawing insights. However, in the future I would use card sorting instead as this directly involves real qualitative data (e.g. quotes) rather than rephrasing statements in concise notes where needs can be subjected to misinterpretation. I also learned that analysis is not simply grouping based on common themes, but categorising in the lens of the problem space.

💡 The Opportunity

Due to cultural differences and social barriers, international students are hesitant and not effectively encouraged to evolve their cultural identity and mingle with students of other cultures, preferring to stick within their cultural comfort zone.
How might we create a supportive environment that empowers international students to embrace their cultural identity while also exploring new cultural experiences in a way that eases anxiety, is personalised and fun?

Defining Users

Through research, we found that target users lied in the range of comfort-bubble inhabiters to adventurous extroverts.
The experiences and demographic data of our interviewees were analysed and translated into 3 personas to remind us of the vast diversity of our target audience. The personas are specifically distinguished by how acclimatised they are to their new environment.

Mina

19 | South Korean | 1st Year University
Arrived in Sydney 3m ago
Prefers & feels more comfortable with native Korean friends.
"I usually rely more on my Korean friends, a smaller circle makes it less intimidating to ask weird questions”

Sheila

21 | Indian | 2nd Year University
Arrived in Sydney 1yr ago
Wants to meet people out of her comfort zone, but is anxious.
"it’s hard to go out of my way and find locals to talk to and explore to make the most out of my opportunity for being here.”

Marco

22 | Italian | 3rd Year University
Arrived in Sydney 3.5yrs ago
Motivated to meet new people & cultures, frustrated with closed-off people.
"I love my heritage, but you can’t grow if you stick to the same people with likely the same mindset.”
💡  Learnings: With the diversity of our target audience, our team decided that creating 3 personas would help us understand the features & needs of different user groups on a "spectrum" rather than absorb our problem in the eyes of one user.  Through persona development, I understood the importance of using real quotes, frustrations, motivations and goals rather than create a superficial character using irrelevant ratings whose needs may be assumed or misaligned.
Translating the pain points of the cultural & social integration journey of an International student.
We developed a User Journey map of Sheila to encapsulate the evolving experiences of international students when adapting in Australia. This persona specifically represents both sides: a reluctant, closed-off newcomer, to a more adapted, but anxious student.
💡  Learnings: The UX map provided a clear, visual picture of our personas' journeys and how they are connected rather than fragmented. This UX map helped me understand how we can shed light on user needs by using a key to associate pain points with relevant parts of the journey which gave rise to opportunities for addressing needs that would inform ideation.
User Experience Map.

Ideation

We came up with crazy, creative & unbiased ideas. After rumination, 3 were left standing.
Considering the diverse experiences of our target users, we encouraged the generation of creative ideas. We engaged in a challenging assumptions and reverse thinking exercise to eliminate any biases surrounding cultural elements. We conducted a crazy 8's brainstorming session, and developed each of our best concepts.
HappiLink Lo-fi Sketch & Storyboard.
Idea 1

Cultural Passport App (HappiLink)

Multicultural social event registration & social app, targeted towards individual students' needs, approaching social interaction in a way that suits their needs.
Strengths: Focus on community building, targets users' individual event preferences
Weaknesses: Extrinsic motivation through vouchers.
Match-a Culture Lo-fi Sketch & Storyboard.
Idea 2

Match-a Culture

Multicultural virtual & in-person study group organiser app. Leverages commonality of being a student by balancing productivity & socialisation over a hypothetical cup of matcha.
Strengths: 2-in-1 approach for busy students to stay on top of studies while branching out of their comfort zone.
Weaknesses: Focus on study groups not be effective for developing long-term, meaniingful connections.
Cultural Match-Making App Lo-fi Sketch & Storyboard.
Idea 3

Cultural Match-Making

Focuses on building one-on-one cultural connections with similar interests for cultural  knowledge exchange & building one’s network one step at a time.
Strengths: Starts small by building smaller connections before user is comfortable to upscale to bigger groups.
Weaknesses: May be misused for other purposes, such as a dating app.
💡 Learnings: The process of ideation helped me understand the significance of exploring our options, as there are many ways to address a problem but few are effective and implementable. In the future, if time permits, it would be worth to invest in more comprehensive concept tests to further validate ideas.

Concept Decision

We selected HappiLink as our best contender in empowering international students explore diverse cultural experiences in a personalised and fun way.
Using Pugh's Decision Matrix and criteria relevant to our problem space and user needs, HappiLink aligned best to users' needs in wanting to find solace in their own culture when homesick, or expanding to new cultural experiences and build meaningful relationships. This was further validated through concept tests and initial feedback sessions.

Prototyping & User + Expert Testing

We assessed our judgement by testing HappiLink's user flow early with target users and experts.
Wireframes were created to involve users & experts early in the design process, helping clarify and improve the current information architecture. Wireframes were tested using task-based scenarios relevant to key features. Through running a total of 14 tests, a range of evaluation methods were employed to optimise feedback.

💬  Pre & Post-Test Interview

Contextualising users' feedback through a pre-test interview, and clarifying users' thoughts through verbal fedback in a post-test.

👀  Observations

Analysing users’ behaviour and body language to identify indications for confusion or confidence when completing tasks.

🗣 Think-Aloud

Revealing assumptions & problems by asking users to verbalise their thought processes and decisions.

🧠  Cognitive Walkthrough

For expert tests, to test the overall flow and integration of features across the platform.
💡 Learnings: Cognitive walkthroughs was a challenge at first, as it was my first time using this method to test our team's decisions on layout & information architecture.  I learned it is worth having more detailed task steps for testers to complete to maximise relevant feedback.
Happilink Wireframes & User Testing Tasks.

Test 1: Key Findings & Iterations

Wireframes to mockups: Increasing the memorability & learnability of HappiLink.
After our first official test, usability issues were noted down & categorised in an affinity map relevant to each usability goal for each task & feature. Key findings were synthesised in a table, recording quantifiable data such as average time taken to complete tasks, the success rate, average errors made to inform iterations. Out of multiple iterations, some significant iterations included:

Strengthening CTAs on the Apple Watch home dashboard

Memorability & effectiveness issue
Users did not associate the plus button with adding an event diary, nor the bell icon to view new event recommendations. These call to actions were made more obvious.
“I don’t know what this [plus icon] would do. Would I click calendar or saved events?”
33.3% successful completion rate to add a reflection

Increasing users' intuition when filtering event recommendations

Memorability Issue
Users overlooked the filter option as they didn’t believe it was interactive. This was integrated with a search bar and we replaced the original search icon with a translation feature for the diverse cultural audience.
“I would click the search button and expect there would be a filter there”
>1min to find how to filter event recommendations.
💡 Learnings: Through iterating our wireframes, I learned that it is important to discuss feedback with team members first rather than spending time iterating everything. This ensured we could work efficiently rather than hyper-fixating on small details. Our team tended to tin-shed (or focus on small, insignificant details such as colour and typography) which hindered our process, so I would attend to such details later in the design process.
Interactive Hi-Fi Prototype

Prototype Test 2: Heuristic Evaluation Findings

Mockups to Hi-Fidelity Interactive Prototypes: We tested HappiLink against industry standards, and iterated some more.
We tested our hi-fi prototype with 9 experts (UX/UI design students) using a heuristic evaluation template. This was to identify violations to usability standards as they allocated a severity rating & recommendation to identified usability issues. By analysing data, we identified our top violated heuristics which needed to be iterated upon most.
Top Violated Heuristics

👀

Visibility of system status

🤸‍♀️

User control & freedom

🚨

Help users recognise, diagnose & recover from errors

✨

Aesthetic and minimalist design

Significant Iterations

Centralising cultural awareness on a less dense screen

Aesthetic & minimalist design
To leverage engaging interactions, we iterated the cultural precautions to have users swipe and actively read rather than skim an information-dense screen. This would also reinforce HappiLink’s centrality on multicultural awareness.
"It was hard to digest, as a user I just wanted to register."

Increasing user autonomy when attending social events

User control & freedom
Throughout the prototype, additional user actions were implemented to provide users the autonomy to approach the event registration and invitation process as they wished, such as setting custom event alert reminders.
"What if i want to set the alert at a specific time?" "What if I want to view the event in my calendar right after registering?"

Enhancing user feedback & visibility of important actions

Visibility of Sytem Status
At times, testers were unsure if they had achieved their goal as there was minimal feedback and visibility of the action. Actions were made more visible, such as adding the 'sync calendar' as a sticky button on the 'calendar' page nav instead of having to scroll down.
"The 'sync calendar' button was hard to find at first. I didn't know i had to scroll." "I didn't know whether the syncing was successful."

Helping users recover from errors

Help users recognise, diagnose & recover from errors
Throughout the app and apple watch, confirmations before committing to actions and being able to edit or re-do actions were integrated, such as editing invites to
"What if I accidentally invited the wrong people to the event? Or if I changed my mind and wanted to invite more?"
💡 Learnings: Our second round of formal user tests with experts helped shed light on the importance of continuous iterations with new testers, to reveal new usability issues that others may have overlooked. This helped ensure our design followed basic design principles before we could test the effectiveness of the solution with actual users in our next testing. However, in the future we would provide more details on user needs & the problem space for more targeted feedback related to the solution's effectiveness.

Prototype Test 3: Key Findings

We tested for the final time with HappiLink's target users.
We designed a final test for 11 users using Loop11 software for final feedback. Loop11 is an unmoderated user testing method to capture user pain point data and observe through screen recordings on how users interacted with the prototype. Data from the tests was analysed and synthesised using an affinity map and key insights table, in which 3 key features needed iterations the most.
💡 Learnings: Initially our team would only use affinity notes to organise feedback, but we decided to use a key insights table to highlight the most important/severe usability issues that needed to be iterated as this was more digestible and balanced quantitative data to support findings. This helped me learn it is not enough to identify feedback, but interpret it in the user's context to understand the best way to approach it.
User Testing Analysis: Top-down affinity map & key insights table

Final Iterations

We made final iterations to enhance HappiLink's usability as a solution for all international students, across cultures.
Final Iterations
🧠 Enhancing Memorability

Follow users’ mental model when interacting with features.

“I assumed I could click on the event first and then edit/delete it from there.”
“I thought that was clickable because it looks similar to the other clickable elements from before.”
“My first reaction to sync devices would be to go to my profile.”
Final Iterations
🕐 Enhancing Efficiency

Clearer CTAs & guiding users to achieve their goals.

“I don’t really know what to do here. Do I just read this?” [when viewing and reading cultural precautions for event]
“I would imagine if I’m viewing this on my apple watch, the “friend going” text would be really, really small”

Success Metrics

HappiLink received an 88% (Excellent) SUS score from users, and a 4.8/5 on how likely international students would recommend it.
The overall positive response from target users indicated that HappiLink would not only be an app students would try out, but want to use frequently to slowly get out of their shell and optimise their experience abroad in a culturally diverse environment. If HappiLink was to get developers on-board, we'd look at the following key success metrics:
Success Metrics

Click Through Rate on recommended events

- Track CTR of featured personalised event recs.
- Track number of registrations & active users overtime
- Analyse associated user actions: inviting friends, syncing calendar frequency, social interactions, etc.

Conversion & Event Participation Rates

- Percentage (%) of students who attend event after registering, and register for event after bookmarking
- Monitor user event attendance & event creation frequency
- Analyse cultural diversity being represented at events

Customer Satisfaction Score

- Use CPS to monitor users' feedback on event recommendations & event types
- Monitor event quality through user feedback (ratings).

Apple Watch Integration Usage

- Assess how many students integrate Apple Watch with app
- Assess usage of apple watch features: event reminders, event alerts & event diaries
💡 Learnings: As I have yet to partake in a project that tests the impact of designers' decisions in the real context, success metrics are factors I would like to further understand and expand my knowledge on, as I believe it is significant to measure the impact of design choices and the effectiveness of the solution after implementation.
HappiLink Promotional Video

Pain Points vs Solution

How HappiLink helps international students overcome disconnection & overwhelm:
It doesn't force students outside their comfort zone, but invites them. It addresses the vulnerabilities and fears of students in a new cultural environment, helping them connect to home while also overcoming barriers, one step at a time.
(With a drizzle of cultural empathy!)

Retrospection

Key learnings I made along the way

 💡 Iterate with meaning

One of my greatest learnings was to view feedback holistically through comprehensive feedback analysis; to assess how potential iterations may enhance users' experiences & interactions rather than rush to change any aspect in response to critical feedback.

 👀  Look from up close and afar

From analysing the small details of the design through its typography and sizing, to understanding the information architecture in response to our problem was critical to ensure we kept user needs at the forefront for every decision made.
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Product Design student based in Sydney.
Open to work, freelance projects or product marketing collabs. Feel free to send me a message! 🧸🎧
Made with 🍵 & 💗 in Sydney, Australia. (｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )