Sweet Peeps
Challenge: To decrease loneliness in Sweden by using elements of imaginary friends and community park benches.
Solution: This was my Major Project, and I decided to make a creative solution for loneliness in Sweden. Doing my research, I find two insights: Children who create imaginary friends are more social and boost a child's social abilities. The other insight is the park benches in a community are vital to helping decrease loneliness. Using these two insights as inspiration, I created a fun and unique social app to make new friends.
Get a personalized character
A main feature of my app is getting a unique character to have as your profile. This character will be created from simple questions when creating your account. I wanted to create something opposite of what social media stands for. Social media embodies all sorts of problems such as comparisons, judgment, and addiction to getting likes, all of these proven to increase loneliness. With that being said, it was vital for me to create something where these don't exist. There is no pressure to upload photos of yourself, and there is no hunt for likes. It creates a safe and happy environment where you can be yourself.
Augmented Reality experience
Another main feature is Location-Based Augmented Reality, where users can go to specific locations, seen on their map, to interact with other user's characters. These locations are near greenery and called digital benches. Having a possibility to go outside from your room to explore characters and give each other virtual hugs and comments is an excellent way for people who want to feel connected to the community without meeting anyone physically. I placed the digital benches in parks where actual benches exist to promote community spaces. Also, each location includes a group that the user will become part of when placing. Augmented Reality gives users a chance to observe imagination up close and explore a fictional world that can help them feel more united. The interactions vary from characters, but the most common are dancing and waving!
Join exiting groups and activities
Universities have a large social community full of activities and groups that you can quickly join to make friends. So, I brought that over to my app to make friends and meet new people easily. Everyone can start a group or activity on the app. People can view them easily by searching for categories or most popular.
App animation
Down below is a video of a user journey experiencing the app.
App animation: Creating the Account
Down below is a video of a user creating the account.
Augmented Reality Experience
I developed and created a video to show the experience of one of the most significant features on the app: Augmented reality interactions. As stated before, the app has a map where you can see other peeps on there to meet in the real world. This promo video will be placed on the website and Sweet Peep's social media accounts as a way for the audience to see how the map works.
Website
I created a mock-up website that tells you more in-depth about what Sweet Peeps stands for. I made an image of these two peeps together to reflect our mission and brand mood. I also wrote one of our mission statements as the main heading because I believe it is essential for people to instantly know that the app is a social platform to meet friends.
