Baseline Study Synthesis: Moose

Team Moose: Sarah Chung, Paige Olson, Drew Silva, and Eli Waldman

Baseline Study

For our baseline study, we wanted to explore how people stay connected with loved ones who are not physically present. Within this space, we find the subpopulation of college students and new grads to be particularly interesting. As current graduate students that witnessed many of our friends graduate and move to disparate cities – and as soon-to-be new grads ourselves – this topic is exceedingly pertinent to our own lives. Specifically, we are interested in the tools, frequency, challenges, and emotional experiences involved in maintaining long-distance relationships  – a relationship medium that we’ve had to rapidly learn and master in order to maintain important relationships in our lives. 

To conduct our baseline study, we recruited eight participants, all of whom are either recent college graduates or current graduate students. All of our participants had recently experienced significant life transitions in the form of relocating for education or starting a new job in a far away city. To ensure our study captured individuals with demanding schedules, we screened for participants who typically have busy schedules, making it difficult to carve out time in the day for virtual connections. Our participant pool consisted of young adults who are highly digitally literate, and they all had high levels of familiarity with communicating virtually. Despite their familiarity and technical ability to bridge physical distances via virtual communication, they still struggle to do so on a consistent basis. 

We made an effort to recruit participants who were in different stages of a new grad with different types of schedules – from just moving to a new city to a year out from graduating.

With this baseline study, we were hoping to understand the gap between the emotional desire to connect with loved ones and how often they actually do in their busy schedules. We also sought to seek out the specific challenges that impede them from reaching out to friends and family. 

For each of four consecutive days, we asked participants to record behaviors related to their communication with their friends and family who were in a different location than them. Participants recorded the following data in a Google Sheet:

1. Time of interaction
   1. Understanding when participants engage in virtual communication helps us identify certain patterns in availability and motivation. We can then learn whether certain times of the day or external factors affect outreach.
2. Mode of interaction (e.g. call, video chat, social media)
   1. Different modes of communication have different levels of engagement: active vs passive, attentive vs non attentive, high mental engagement vs low mental engagement. Analyzing this helps us determine which methods are preferred and where there could be room for improvement.
3. Participant location
   1. Capturing where participants are when they communicate helps us identify whether a participants’ environment plays a role in their outreach; for example, do participants communicate more on their commute than they do at home? Understanding the location of outreach helps us discover any physical barriers to virtual connection. 
4. Recipient location
   1. This helps us establish the physical distance between our participant and their contact. Understanding the physical distance gap can provide insights into how people communicate with contacts at different distances; are cross country relationships managed differently than friends or family that live an hour away?
5. Emotions at start of interaction
   1. This helps us understand how strongly communication is influenced by mood, as well as the spontaneity of distanced communication. From this, we can learn emotional triggers.
6. Whether or not they felt closer with the recipient after the interaction
   1. This gives us insight into the motives and effectiveness of distanced communication; are participants feeling positive/fulfilled post-interaction?
7. A brief reflection comparing the interaction with in-person interactions
   1. This provides insights into where digital communication fails and surpasses in-person interaction, helping us establish potential areas for improvement.

Following the conclusion of this four day diary study, we conducted post-study interviews in an attempt to gather some more insights on their experiences logging their interactions. In these interviews, participants were asked to reflect on their experiences during the study. This discussion focused on:

1. General Experience: How participation influenced communication habits, whether logging impacted their outreach behavior, and any surprises related to their communication patterns.
2. Emotional Reflections: How they felt before and after reaching out to somebody, the emotional barriers to communication, and whether the study changed their perspective on maintaining relationships. 
3. Study Feedback: Suggestions for improving the study in the future, insights on most useful aspects of the study, and recommendations for making the study more meaningful in the future.  

The full details of these post-study interviews can be found in the appendix.

The key findings of this study revealed that the majority of our target audience has a desire to stay connected, but face significant friction in doing so. One major barrier was the lack of an explicit conversation topic, making participants hesitant to reach out just to catch up with their loved ones. Additionally, busy schedules added another barrier to staying connected. Time zone differences, especially across different countries, added another layer of friction, making spontaneous communication even more challenging. Every participant described experiencing at least one of these challenges at some point during the study. 

Raw Data → Grounded Theory

After conducting 8 baseline studies, we analyzed our data by noting key quotes and observations. Then, we noticed commonalities in our data points and created the themes to visualize clusters of related information; themes included family vs. friends, mode of communication, motives, challenges, life changes, and use of memes and DMs. By viewing our data in these clusters, we identified contradictions, patterns, and surprises (see arrows and numbers in the image below), unlocking key insights to inform our next steps. The following are examples of these trends and contradictions: 

• Some subjects preferred to reach out to loved ones when they were not feeling great, while others preferred to avoid contact until they were out of their bad mood 
• Many subjects expressed that they like out of the blue FaceTimes and long catch ups via phone calls or FaceTime
• One subject felt comfortable not responding to people he felt close to 
• Subjects reported that they felt closer after interacting with loved ones via text despite noting that the interaction quality was worse than in person 
• In an online setting, subjects lack the ability to bump into people casually 

We then re-analyzed our data chronologically over a one week time period. From our baseline, we hypothesized that one week was needed to capture the emotional cycles that people experience when keeping up with friends, yet granular enough to identify specific behaviors. We created a typical bad week (on the left) and good week (on the right), hoping to identify key behaviors and events that cause positive or negative habits. 

Our main takeaway from the chronological view was that long distance relational maintenance cannot be one-sided (meaning both parties need to be bought in and comfortable reaching out); unfortunately, some friends drift apart when both parties aren’t comfortable with digital communication. We identified this pattern by noticing that behaviors on the “good” side involved subjects being proactive about communication while behaviors on the “bad” side did not. 

After visualizing our raw data with post-it notes, we formalized our key insights by using grounded theory and other visualization techniques with the goal of discovering conflicts, contradictions, or anything particularly motivating. 

First, we came away from our raw data and interviews with the sentiment that there are passive and active types of distanced interactions. For example, some find it easier to stay connected with physically-distanced friends by monitoring their wellness metrics via Apple Watch or Oura. Alternatively, some prefer more active and attentive means of communication – like a FaceTime or a virtual, competitive game. Further, there also exist high-mental investment and low-mental investment digital distanced interactions. Sharing the Wordle – for instance – would be high mental investment and a very active form of communication. Conversely, sending a TikTok would be passive and require lower mental investment. 

We wanted to continue to explore this 2×2 and understand peoples’ motivation in selecting a medium and how that medium affects their physically-distant relationship.

Key Insights 

From our comparative analysis, baseline studies, and affinity mapping in class, we found several key insights:

• Gamification like Wordle and the Crossword offer a way for our users to be more actively engaged without putting a lot of pressure on them. 
• While low-effort, passive apps (e.g. TikTok, Instagram Reels) lower the barrier of entry of interaction (which are more sustainable), they don’t foster meaningful engagement in virtual social interactions
• People preferred the quality of social interactions that were active (FaceTime, iMessages) but often felt that it can feel draining and hard to participate consistently, leading to inconsistent usage

System Models

Post-Grad Cycle

This model shows a cycle we identified in many of our pos-grad subjects. Post grads feel lonely and miss their friends. They are scared to reach out and fear rejection. Finally, it gets to a point where they reach out to friends and they feel positive and ready to maintain contact. However, sometimes the cycle begins again! As a team, we need to identify what causes these subjects to finally act. It would also be helpful to understand when friends reciprocate and why – for instance, does it depend on the mode of communication or level of closeness? Note that this cycle takes place over a week, but we did not label specific days of the week as any of these events could occur on any day. A few subjects had more time and ended up reaching out on the weekend, while others reached out in less busy parts of the week. 

LDR Support Causality

This model highlights the importance of understanding external factors and individual preferences when understanding behaviors in this domain. Specifically, some subjects will inevitably prefer alone time when they are feeling down, while others will prefer to lean on their long-distance relationships. 

After examining our raw data, we wanted to better understand the emotions and feelings behind certain interactions. Mainly, we wanted to diagnose how our participants felt when they reached out vs. when they didn’t reach out, and see if we could generalize these sentiments to the border population. 

Next, in order to understand the activation potential behind reaching out to a distant friend or family member, we needed to better formalize the moments leading up to someone reaching out. This fishbone diagram helped us consider both the aspects working in parallel and the conflicting motivations behind connecting with a friend or family member, based on our raw data.

Lastly, after discovering some contradictions in our raw data, we wanted to examine and fully understand the participants who rarely reached out to friends or family during the study, as it could provide valuable insights into how to effectively increase the frequency in which our target population reaches out. When designing for a behavior change, it’s not enough to just know your target population’s success cases. It’s just as important to know what to not design and who not to design for. This iceberg model helped illuminate this insight:

Secondary Research

Competitor Research

To get a better understanding of what is currently being done to facilitate virtual conversations and connection, we looked at eight different products in our domain. We have included screenshots of two of these products below:

For each of these eight competitors, we examined the product’s unique features, target audience, and strengths and weaknesses in order to identify gaps in the current landscape. 

Key Findings

1. Innovative Features: Locket’s (1) unique home screen widget feature provides automatic updates, which significantly reduces the activation energy required for user engagement. This frictionless design has contributed to 20 million downloads within its first year and continues to rank among the top 20 in the iOS App Store’s free Social Networking category since its start in 2021, showing a clear demand for lightweight, passive social sharing.
2. Target Audience & Retention Strategies: Platforms like Retro cater to a similar target audience of young adults (ages 18-24), aligning with our target demographic. However, we see that they lack habit-forming elements that drive engagement. For instance, Retro does not have in-app messaging, which is proven to boost retention by 30% when properly implemented. In addition, we saw that 90% of users who engage with an app at least once a week are more likely to be long-term users–Retro attempts to leverage this behavior through weekly photo update nudges, though its long-term retention is not clear.

Our most critical takeaway is that no existing product effectively balances a) promoting consistent interactions and b) providing a high depth of connection. Current products excel at one, but not both. For example, BeReal (2) promotes daily interactions, but does not necessarily have the depth of connection that is required to maintain relationships. BeReal’s unique notification system in promoting consistent interactions via a daily prompt helped the app go viral, reaching the #1 spot on the iOS App Store’s free apps category in July of 2022 and a peak of 73.5 million monthly active users in August of 2022. Despite its rapid success, the app does not offer a way to connect deeper beyond photo-sharing and reports have shown a halving of monthly users since. In addition, a significant portion of users are not engaging with the app on a daily basis despite its claim to fame. On the other hand, Marco Polo’s asynchronous video messaging feature enables users to feel 90% to the people they connected with after using the app, but offers no incentive for regularly staying in touch. 

Our research showed us that there is a need for a product that makes it easy to stay connected consistently while fostering more meaningful interactions.  A deeper analysis of all eight competitors that we discovered while conducting our secondary research can be found in the appendix.

Following this analysis, we created a 2×2 map mapping out our competitors in order to get a better understanding of what need our product could fulfill.

1. As of February 2025, the Locket app is #17 on the iOS App Store’s Social Networking category.
2. As of February 2025, BeReal is currently ranked #67 on the iOS App Store’s Social Networking category.

Literature Review

Along with analyzing similar products in our product domain, we also identified research papers that explored some potential options for promoting remote connection. Our key findings from this research are listed below:

• There are several barriers to reconnection that young adults have encountered in their previous attempts, such as lost contact information, social norms around reconnection, the unwillingness to seek help from mutual friends who could facilitate reconnection, and lack of digital literacy.
• Although social media fails to assist meaningful, low-pressure connection efforts, there are certain forms of digital communication that can actually strengthen remote relationships.
  • Mediums of communication have differing effects on relationships. Phone calls foster stronger bonds, while social media interactions are linked to loneliness and anxious attachment. 
  • Most college students rely on texting and phone calls for family communication.
• Social connection is essential for mental health and well-being.
• Maintaining long-distance relationships requires strategic communication choice, and individuals must meticulously select their modes of communication to sustain these relationships.

Our full literature review can be located in the appendix.

Proto-Personas and Journey Maps

Using our findings from our diary study and secondary research, we were able to create proto-personas that represent potential users of our product. Each member of our team created their own proto-persona. 

When creating our personas, we aimed to capture the core challenges faced by our target audience–busy individuals and college graduates that genuinely want to stay in touch with loved ones but struggle to do so due to their demanding schedules. We saw in our interviews there are many barriers to consistent and high-quality interactions and maintaining long-distance relationships, and we felt that Corporate Cole and On-Campus Gavin represent two but highly relevant user groups that cover a broad spectrum of our audience. Both feel disconnected in their own way and experience frustration, disappointment, and guilt over missed opportunities to connect despite having different lifestyles. See our two personas in detail below:

Corporate Cole

Corporate Cole represents a key subset of our target audience—young professionals who genuinely want to keep in touch with their loved ones but struggle due to their busy schedule. As a new grad navigating the post-grad transition in a busy job in a new city, Cole often finds himself playing phone tag, which leads him to feeling out of the loop. He reschedules catch-up calls, and most of his incoming calls and texts go unanswered during his workday as his 6 core college friends are now scattered across different time zones. In addition, he has another work phone and work laptop which keeps him busy enough as is. Although he tries to feebly bridge this gap through asynchronous text conversations and Instagram Reels, these methods are not sufficient for maintaining the meaningful relationships in his life, including his mother who isn’t on any social media and thus misses out on his Instagram highlight reels. 

His experience showcases the importance of creating a low-friction, flexible method for staying engaged with family and friends despite his time constraints. Corporate Cole’s journey map is depicted below:

Key Insights for Corporate Cole:

1. After spending all day focused on his work, Corporate Cole is excited to return home, decompress, and reconnect with his college friends and family
2. After getting his hopes up, Corporate Cole feels disappointed after failed attempts at reconnection, and feels discouraged from reaching out in the future.

On-Campus Gavin

On-Campus Gavin represents users similar to Corporate Cole in that their busy schedules prevent them from communicating with long distance friends. However, On-Campus Gavin is still in college, and therefore is not confined to a strict 9-5+ corporate schedule. Instead, his days are varied in terms of when he wakes up, works out, goes to class, studies, socializes, applies for jobs, and works at a job. In addition, as the president of the Surf Club on campus, On-Campus Gavin juggles many activities at once! Additionally, he focuses mainly on staying in touch with close friends from home and family while balancing a vibrant campus social life. As he runs from the gym to his dorm, he struggles to find 30+ minute blocks for meaningful calls. He is often more available at night after all his club meetings, classes, and late work shifts, but that time doesn’t align with his family’s weekly FaceTime calls, which are in the evenings.  In addition, his multiple competing priorities and constant context switching (especially during midterm season and weekend surf competitions) make certain weeks even more difficult to stay in touch. Although On-Campus Gavin largely represents college students, this persona may also extend to post-grads with more variable schedules (i.e. not strict corporate schedules).

Overall Insights

Our research reveals a common pattern across both personas. Despite the fact that On-Campus Gavin and Corporate Cole have access to multiple messaging platforms, they often struggle to maintain meaningful digital communication styles that work for them and their loved ones. 

Corporate Cole may feel alone in his struggles; with so many of his friends still in the same city back home, it is easy to reminisce about the times where work did not consume his life, and he could easily stay in touch with everybody without being restricted by his 9-5. However, On-Campus Gavin’s journey map shows it is difficult for any individual with a busy schedule to keep in touch with friends and his family back home. Despite Corporate Cole’s rather rigid routine and On-Campus Gavin’s spontaneous, inconsistent schedule, the sheer amount of events that these two fit into a single day make it extremely difficult to stay in touch with their loved ones, especially when having to account for the recipient’s presumably busy schedule as well. As a result of suffering from this fragmented scheduling and communication fatigue, Corporate Cole and On-Campus Gavin are eager to find a product that can facilitate simple yet deep reconnections, without having to worry too much about manually coordinating their schedules. In a world where the list of tasks to be completed seems to be never ending, Corporate Cole and On-Campus Gavin don’t always have the mental and emotional capacity to figure out the best way to reach out to an old friend or beloved family member. This gap suggests that low-effort and asynchronous methods may help maintain relationships without feeling overwhelming for both Corporate Cole and On-Campus Gavin. We can see that both personas experience anxiety and guilt about maintaining their relationships.

It is also becoming clear that this gap aligns with broader trends in digital communication among young adults. Despite the amount of communication tools available to Corporate Cole and On-Campus Gavin, they still haven’t solved the fundamental problem of maintaining meaningful relationships. By addressing this gap, we aim to serve a wide range of users who want to maintain meaningful relationships without the stress of coordination. 

Appendix

Post Study Interview Script

Comparative Research

Literature Review