My team and I developed Check In Club, a website that helps people stay
connected with their loved ones through shared, guided check-ins. Users
join private groups, respond to curated prompts, and receive a beautifully
formatted email compiling everyone's responses in one place.
My contributions
included researching how people communicate with those closest to them,
shaping the user experience, and prototyping the final designs for presentation
in our Design Studio I course. This project is currently being further developed
and refined as part of our final semester Capstone.
Problem: Existing communication tools make it difficult for users to maintain meaningful connections with loved ones across distance, time zones, and platforms. How might we reduce the effort and friction required to help people regularly stay connected with their loved ones, even when separated by distance, schedules, and differing communication habits?
Solution: Design a web platform that facilitates meaningful connections. Ensure that it is accessible to users of all ages, and makes sharing their lives & stories easier.
Impact: This project is currently being further developed and refined as part of our final semester Capstone. More insights coming soon!
In my family, everyone talks to my grandma first. She's the one who knows what everyone is up to, even when we don't talk often. I started wondering what it would look like if that shared knowledge could be captured and passed along - without relying on social media or constant check-ins. That idea became the foundation for Check In Club.
To better understand the problem space, we began by analyzing direct competitors and conducting a survey with 20 respondents. From this research, several key insights emerged:
Prototyped a platform with a simple information architecture that is easy to navigate for users of all ages
Prototyped a robust prompt library, with options to save favorite prompts
Ensured users were able to add images while creating newsletters
Prototype & User-Test Earlier
Due to the tight timelines of the course, our team had limited time to iterate on and refine our prototypes, which resulted in a more condensed finalization phase. As a result, we were unable to conduct user testing on the final version of the product, leaving some uncertainty around how fully the solution met our original goals.
Research, Research, Research
As new design students, we initially underestimated the importance of rigorous research. While we did gather early feedback, much of it was high-level and overwhelmingly positive, often focused on excitement around seeing the product completed. This limited the depth of insight needed to fully validate our design decisions, resulting in a solution that relied more on intuition than evidence.
My team is continuing to build Check In Club as part of our fourth-semester Capstone course. We're building upon our research, refining the user experience, and validating the concept through more thorough user testing and iteration. I'm excited to continue evolving this project and will update this case study as the course progresses.