TruBond
Fostering real connections through real moments in a digital age.
ROLE
Team Lead, UX Designer
TIMELINE
January 31st - February 1st
TEAM
3 UX Designers
TOOLS AND SKILLS
Figma, Figjam, User Research, Affinity Mapping
BACKGROUND
During this UX competition hosted by Rice University, my team and I build TruBond, in less than 48 hours. This competition had over 400 participants from all over the country gathered together to create amazing designs.
The prompt for this design competition was: Staying human in the age of AI
How can we stay human in the age of AI? What does being human even mean? “Human connection is so special and you can’t get that from the digital world.” TruBond is dedicated to help people foster deeper connections with the relationships in their life.
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
Gen Z, in particular, has a hard time establishing deeper relationships with the people around them due to laziness and lack of initiative in those connections
In this digital age that we live in, everything is quick and easily accessible at the touch of our fingertips, thanks to AI. However, society has been becoming quite lazy due to the fast-paced nature of our world. Younger generations have a hard time forming deep connections. These relationships are not something that AI can replicate, which is what makes these so crucial to being human. Developing these personal relationships are necessary to bring people joy and meaning in life, so finding ways to allow people to connect on this level is essential.
SOLUTION
Deepen relationships by making life-long memories together
TruBond is designed to help bring current relationships grow into a deeper connection. It helps relationships, such as friendships, make time for each other and experience different things together to make lasting memories and creating spaces for those relationships to blossom.
Question-of-the-day
QOTD allow people to engage in open discussions. Simply talking with the people around you and conversing about different subjects help establish a deeper relationship with each other.
AI-assisted itinerary planner
Experiencing life together and putting in the effort to spend time with your loved ones is a key factor in growing a relationship. Our AI assisted planner eases the planning process by supporting users with recommendations (e.g. food spots that cater to both parties’ taste, activities and events, etc). Plans can be made and sent to friends to collaborate on different events, engaging both parties.
Cherish memories with a Time Capsule
Time capsules can be created to help cherish the memories that users have with their friends by storing a collection of artifacts from a special moment (e.g. the QOTD, photos, music they listened to, letters, etc). These capsules allows users to store and revisit special memories that they have with each other.
INITIAL RESEARCH
With the limited time that we had, we allocated the first day of the competition to do research. Our team discussed the concept of “staying human” and came up with key ideas like connection, identity, nostalgia, and social interaction. Following, we researched from online articles to learn more about AI and its impact on humanity. This brainstorming/research session helped us identify areas to explore further and guided us before starting our primary research.
PRIMARY RESEARCH
“Humans are different than like other species because we have feelings and emotional intelligence…in order to act on that, we need to build deeper connections with the people around us.”
We used both qualitative and quantitative methods via 7 interviews with Gen Z participants and an online survey with both open ended and multiple choice questions. We utilized both open ended and multiple choice to not only gain more profound insights about the participants’ thoughts, but also have statistical support to back up our claims. The semi-structured interviews helped us gain a deeper understanding of what being humans means to people and how they feel about AI, and the current technology landscape.
We got 22 survey respondents in just a few hours. Here's what we found…
From our survey, we discovered a few key statistics: (1) 85.7% of participants are motivated to reach out to others when they have a shared interest, (2) 66.7% mostly interact with others offline, (3) 90.5% of participants do not use AI for relationship advice. The last statistic showcases our participants’ understanding of AI’s limitation to have emotional connection. They mainly use AI for educational or career purposes. These insights point to the fact that humans desire emotional, real relationships.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
People gravitate towards those with similar values and upbringing as them, and would rather deepen current relationships rather than forming new ones, emphasizing the idea of quality over quantity.
To define the problem more clearly, we affinity mapped the key points from the survey and interview. This allowed us to identify the major pain points.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
What do the products on the market offer?
We analyzed popular itinerary planning and friendship building platforms such as Wanderlog, Howbout, Yubo, and Bumble For Friends. We identified their strengths being real time communication with others, interactive calendar syncing, and having a lot of freedom and control in the features. These findings prompted us to create a collaborative itinerary planner that helps foster deeper communication and relationships, while including some other components that supported the main purpose of the application.
STYLE GUIDE
FINAL PRODUCT
TruBond encourages people to transition towards a deeper level of connection by engaging in conversations, spending quality time with each other, and cherishing memories together.
REFLECTION
Based on the feedback that my team got, I would like to continue working on this for the future and adjust the following…
1.) Simplicity and intentionality. Hone in making more intentional decisions with the features. By simplifying some of the features and focusing on the smaller details not only make the app more compelling, but also target the very specific, core issue.
2.) Visual Design. Playing around with UI and fine tuning the visual design. With the time limitations, it was hard for us to really wireframe and test out different UI layouts. Moving forward, I would also like to establish more consistency with things like the color and hierarchy as well.
What I learned…
1.) Time management and planning is essential. We only spent the first 2 days creating the prototype and the last day was spent getting the submission materials ready. It was definitely a time crunch (running on 3 hours of sleep), but was incredibly worth the experience and learning.
2.) Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. Going hand-in-hand with the previous learning, you MUST learn how to prioritize and choose what to focus on. Otherwise, you’ll get lost in the small things that aren’t relevant in the overall picture.
3.) Check-in with your team. As the team lead, I was in charge of organization and guiding the team. I learned how important it is to clearly communicate things and check in with the other members to get updated on the progress of the project. This communication is very important.
© 2025
Created by Sharon Oh