JOMO (the joy of missing out). An app for those who wants to take a break from life.
Multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts.
A walkthrough of features when users first enter the app.
I added more personalized functions for users to engage.
Say no to toxic positivity and face your everyday negativity!
Keeping track of daily activities.
18 to 29-year-olds are using social media
Mental health has grown by
After doing some research on the relationship between mental health and the usage on social media, I developed several assumptions myself. In order to validate these assumptions and identify the real problem, I conducted 4 interviews and here are my insights:
Social media is the main reason people felt stressed, insecure, anxious and depressed.
Sometimes they are just experiencing a mentally unstable time at their life, social media isn’t the one to blame even though it could aggravate the situation. The feeling that social media is mentally harmful usually arouse internally.
People who uses social media sometimes goes on a "doom-scroling" spree and feel more negative emotions after.
Users would post something new and subconsciously waiting for responses from friends. Furthermore made them extremely anxious and cannot focus on the things that they are doing right now.
People go on social media detox but some is fearful of losing touch with friends.
Some users delete the whole account while some delete the app only. But they still crave human connection while staying away from social media. They would direct message their friends using iMessage, Whatsapp and so on, while some of them felt the process of reaching out to a friend directly very forced and not very seamless.
People are looking for ways to reconnect with friends when they are currently in a more stressed and hectic phase of their life. Social media provides human connection but cannot satisfy their needs anymore. They want a simple and delightful space where they can keep in touch with loved ones and not feel triggered by the content.
Heavy social media users who seek a temporary detox from social media.
I began grouping HMWs and brainstorm ideas that could fulfill user needs.
A stress-free environment that is fun and allows users to interact with friends.
In this stage, I did two rounds of testings before I move forward with Interaction designs and prototyping.
A usability test was conducted with 3 participants over Zoom and 1 participant in person to test out the first iteration of JOMO
to identify any crucial issues.
Participants were asked to complete the task of “posting a check-in” with a Gif and participating in an activity.
Other than validating design iterations from round 1, I focused more on design details and interactions.
I had several assumptions at the beginning. But through deeper research, I found out more accurate user needs and validated problems.
For this project I went on to explore more ways of prototyping and interactions. I also tried to design through Protopie (which is a really powerful tool but very limited on the free plan). I had fun playing around with interactions and hope to get better at it. After all, a great interaction design can make a big difference on user experience.
