bringing friends and family together over time zones.
TIME OUT TOGETHER
MY ROLE
TEAM
DURATION
TOOLS
User centered design
24 hours
Figma
Haipei Chen
Lea Hidaka
Mandy Wu
Maia (me!)
BACKGROUND
Time Out Together was created as a part of UW's SWE Hacks 2023 hackathon. Our project won first place in the networks track. The prompt was to create a solution to the question: how can we connect people across languages, borders, and cultures?
INITIAL PROBLEM DISCOVERY
When was the last time you talked to a loved on who lives across the world?
We realized that similar to ourselves, many people have friends or family members living in other regions of the world and wish that they could keep in touch with them more often, but find it hard to initiate conversation.
Many people have close relationships with those who live in locations with different time zones, but find it hard to connect with them on a regular basis.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we support geographically separated relationships in maintaining a strong connection?
SOLUTION
Time Out Together.
A platform intended to initiate and foster conversations with our loved ones, no matter how far apart they are. Whether this be with a high school friend group away at college or grandparents living in another country, this platform serves as a fun and convenient way to stay in touch with people in our life.
FEATURES
Determining the key features within our application.
After solidifying what we wanted our solution to be, we sketched out key features we envisioned in the app. We sketched them on pen and paper before moving to Figma to create the final designs.
Daily group activities
Every day, groups will receive a new prompt to respond to in a unique format, such as visual,text, or audio responses.
01
02
Rewards system
Giving rewards such as unlocking new questionnaire packs encourages people to stay connected consistently.
03
Customizable group chats
Have different features to customize group
chats to create a more personal feel for each different group of people users chat with.
STYLE GUIDE
Determining fonts and colors.
HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Finalizing our designs.
Upon finalizing the colors and fonts for the app, we began the designs of the high fidelity prototype.
CHALLENGES AND LIMITATIONS
Some challenges we ran into.
REFLECTION
My takeaways and learnings from the hackathon.
This is the first hackathon I had participated in, and I learned a significant amount in the 24 hours. Although working in such tight time restraints was a bit stressful, it encouraged our team to work together to think of out of the box design ideas. I am proud of the work we finished in this time. Check out our Devpost with a video further detailing our ideation process here.
SOME OTHER WORKS