Digital Belonging Interventions
Combining UX design in the context of urbanism, I explored how belonging could be increased among students and within the city.
Overview
This was the final deliverable of my 8-month senior honours project. With mentorship from Danielle Deveau and Dr. Vanessa Schweizer (University of Waterloo), I conducted ~10 journalistic interviews, analyzed 4 apps, surveyed 100+ people, and ran a 4-person usability test—narrowing five belonging concepts into one high-fidelity prototype.
"I found [the] combination of technology, storytelling, and cartography in [your] ideas to be very innovative."
- DANIELLE DEVEAU, CULTURAL MAPPING AND UX EXPERT
Problem
Only 16% of Americans feel connected to their local communities. In Canada, urban belonging is significantly lower than in rural areas. Students, meanwhile, often feel like outsiders in the cities they live in temporarily.
Despite assumptions that digital tools erode connection, I asked: what if we could design them to foster it instead?
How might we use mobile phones not as a driver of disconnect, but a driver of community in student towns?
Solution
I designed five interventions to address different stages of student disconnection. After testing them with over 100 students and community members, I focused on one core insight:
The feeling that there’s “nothing to do” in the city.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
No more contrived experiences. Choose a type of place you want to go to and a random location will be generated.
BOND WITH THE CITY, OR BOND WITH FRIENDS
Learn more about your destination via a "Truth", or "Dare" to try something new.
DIVERSE WAYS TO EXPLORE
Whether with friends or alone, there are many ways to explore the city.
Design Process
Since my thesis began with a broad focus, I moved between UX research, design, and entrepreneurship before narrowing in on students.
I started with a literature review and competitor analysis, then refined my insights through user research, concept testing, and a usability study.
Design Criteria
I focused on viability, desirability, and feasibility, while limiting solutions to mobile due to its portability and accessibility in urban settings.
Strategic Decisions
1. Based the problem in multiple disciplines
I enriched the original problem using a multi-disciplinary perspective. Doing this deepened understanding of the problem beyond a UX lens.
A cartographic approach kept place central in my ideas and guided my focus toward location-based games, friendship apps, and prosocial exchanges.
↓ (hover below to see how each discipline informed my research!) ↓
Entrepreneurship
The Mom Test.
When conducting user research, I tried to talk about problems users have, instead of my ideated solutions. This approach ensures users don't lie to spare my feelings (much like a mom would).
Urban Planning
Kevin Lynch's "Image of the City".
This book talks about 5 different "mental images" that humans use to conceptualize cities—paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. This was especially important to consider in Location-Based Games.
Psychology
Barriers to belonging.
I consulted literature that looked into fear of rejection, as well as in-group biases. This motivated me to see how technology could bypass these barriers, especially for prosocial exchange and friendship apps.
Sociology
Social capital theories.
Looking at the loneliness epidemic report from the U.S. Surgeon General, I paid particular focus on bridging social capital, or the relationships someone has with dissimilar individuals.
2. Ideated... and then ideated again.
I conceptualized ~15 ideas that ranged from feature add-ons on pre-existing apps to entirely new app concepts. To cut down, I bundled ideas together, but still found myself stumped. That's when I realized...
I was designing for everyone (i.e. no one)?
Rookie mistake. 🤦🏻♂️
I quickly pivoted. Knowing my own lived experience plus the ease of convenience sampling at my university, I opted to focus on students.
This led to me designing five speculative interventions that addressed belonging at key moments of student life — from joining clubs to preparing to leave.
I also infused ideas to increase bridging social capital (relationships with dissimilar people) and connections, leading to a focus on culture, volunteerism, memory-making and more.
3. Tested on users... and had to pivot.
I began with interviews, then ran concept tests to validate my ideas. Many assumptions from my literature review and auto-ethnography didn’t hold up.
However, I found that students connected through clubs and often felt time slipping away—insights that shaped concepts like StoryClub and Final Year Diaries.
Still, I found myself stubbornly prioritizing literature over participant insights, especially as I wanted to push for theory-aligned features. However, when doing concept testing I learned a key lesson...
Key UX Lesson: Literature and autoethnography don't replace user insights.
While most ideas were well-received, Final Year Diaries—rooted in user interviews—was the clear favourite. Others received neutral or negative feedback, highlighting that user insights outweigh theory.
Prioritizing literature-driven goals over actual behaviour (like how business goals sometimes supersede UX) likely made some concepts less relevant.
4. Created a quick-and-dirty prototype for real-world testing
I chose to focus on Final Year Diaries due to its success (and a lack of time to address less popular concepts).
I conducted a competitor analysis of Location-Based Games (Pokemon Go, Randonautica) and looked into the brand identity of apps like Partiful and Lapse to quickly create a Gen Z-relevant aesthetic for testing.
HOW USER INSIGHTS WERE APPLIED
Gen Z-Attuned Microcopy
I turned a simple loading animation into an opportunity to tap into casual internet humour, self-aware language, and local context—creating a tone that feels playful, personal, and place-based.
Time-Based Discovery
Knowing that time is a scarce resource for university students, I centred discovery constraints around time, rather than distance (like most location-based games).
Semi-Randomized Choice
Students are always looking for new places to explore, but they also have functional needs at specific moments, such as needing to find a place to eat. This offers some serendipity while giving users some control.
Exploring with Friends or Solo
After seeing in concept testing how people wanted to use this to explore new places with their friends, I sought to incorporate both solo and group exploration modes, with different prompts for each mode.
In my usability test, responses were mixed, with more interactive experiences receiving high ratings and more reflective activities receiving lower ratings.
↓ (hover below to see some insights from each category!) ↓
The "Dare"
The "dare" involved doing an activity with friends.
8.5/10
"Adding the challenges at these locations added a personalized element to the experience that I may not have gotten if I didn’t use the app."
The "Truth"
The "truth" was a fact about the location they visited.
4.25/10
Users found the fact that was given to them very underwhelming, especially when compared to the challenge they were given in the "Dare".
Sadly, this fact also did not necessarily increase participants' belonging in the city.
Exploring with Friends
8.75/10
"I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to make friends with this group of people. At first, I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy myself or if I was going to be left out, but I made the intentional choice of letting myself get out of my comfort zone."
Reflection Activity
3.0/10
Users simply found the blank textbox to be... boring.
Measuring Impact
Results were mixed. I only had time to test one concept, so it's unclear if refining the others would've improved impact. While Final Year Diaries fostered group belonging, it didn’t strengthen city connection—a key goal.
Still, the project showed the value of merging disciplines to create user-centric, engaging experiences. Even with the mixed reception, all participants heavily enjoyed some aspects of the experience, including belonging in a group setting.
Next Steps
1. Explore different features at all parts of the journey
Users mentioned that while the activities at the location chosen were engaging, the journey to the location and the reflective activity felt uninteresting in comparison. Exploration of different prompts or highlighting points of interest might help in making the beginning and end of the journey more interesting.
2. Pay special attention to navigation features
Although I made the navigation portion of the Figma prototype non-interactive to make something quick for testing, I still received higher-than-expected friction when it came to navigation. It was a good reminder that students are more dependent on navigation than ever — however, this needs to be balanced against the development cost of implementing such features.
3. Rethink belonging in the city
Is belonging in a city something that happens through knowing more about it? Or does it happen through the cultivation of shared and solo experiences in the city, regardless of how much you know about it? This is a question that I want to explore more and incorporate in this project.
