Yours Truly
Addressing isolation with digital letters and memory-keeping
Overview
Yours Truly is a mobile app that allows students abroad to create multimedia letters to keep them connected with loved ones. This app is part of a service design project for the Bing Overseas Studies Program (BOSP) at Stanford. BOSP plays an integral role in many undergraduates' Stanford careers with approximately 1/2 of every graduating class participating in at least 1 BOSP program. Given the scope and impact, I was excited to lead the whole design process, from research to implementation.
MY ROLE
UX Designer, Service Designer
THE TEAM
Blaine Wells — PM
DURATION
10 weeks
TOOLS
Figma, FigJam, Miro, Photoshop, Jiro, Slack
Problem
Students studying abroad feel disconnected from their loved ones.
Solution
Platformed designed to help students maintain connections with their support networks.
DISCOVER
User Research
BOSP is a complex network of people, processes, and emotions. In order to identify who to interview I created an actor map to understand stakeholders and relationships. I decided upon recruitment of four main types of actors due to their key roles in the service.
Having interviewed 10 participants, I came together with my team to sort the initial takeaways into several common insights across interviews.
UNSORTED INSIGHTS
FIRST SORT
SECOND SORT
Furthermore, to uncover emotional highs and lows as well as resource dependencies, I created journey maps for key interviewees.
Our research process revealed the following:
KEY INSIGHT 1
Trouble keeping up with program updates
Actors find it difficult to stay on top of changes in program requirements.
KEY INSIGHT 2
Helplessness against safety concerns abroad
Students feel helpless against identity-based harassment abroad.
KEY INSIGHT 3
BOSP struggles communicating resources
Students struggle to find quality information about studying abroad.
View entire synthesis report
Rapid Experimentation
As part of our ideation process, we examined many different HMWs, potential solutions (including dark horse ideas), and 10 rough prototypes, before narrowing it down to 3 main prototypes as seen below. We used the findings from these experiments to guide our final solution.
Findings
We conducted our experiments with 14 participants and uncovered the following:
FROM VIRTUAL PET MESSENGER EXPERIMENT
85%
of students preferred novel and exciting communication methods
FROM BOSP BODY GUARDS EXPERIMENT
100%
of students felt safer in a bodyguard pair
FROM DESTINATION POP-UP CAFES EXPERIMENT
64%
of students enjoyed proactive reach-outs from BOSP
FROM DESTINATION POP-UP CAFES EXPERIMENT
92%
of students enjoyed proactive reach-outs from BOSP
View entire experiment report
Shifting our focus to students
Our user research revealed core internal issues within BOSP. However, due to limited support from BOSP, time constraints, and limited decision-making power on our end, we couldn't move forward with a project targeting these key issues. Thus, we decided to focus on the consumer-end of the service, focusing on students. We redefined our new redirection based on student interviews that expressed preference for novel, personable, and exciting communication experiences.
NEW DIRECTION
HMW help students bridge communication gaps with their support systems while studying abroad, overcoming distance and time zone challenges in an engaging way?
DEFINE
Defining our Solution
Having agreed upon a focus, we developed a molecule to consolidate our solution.
Competitive Analysis
To strengthen our solution, I conducted a SWOT analysis of competitor apps that keep users engaged across distances.
Findings
Our competitors excel in creating engaging communication experiences that focus on building long-term connections through anticipation-driven design. However, their heavy reliance on in-app communication can negatively impact user retention. Additionally, they fall short in providing diverse multimedia options, memory-keeping features, and personalization capabilities.
PRD
To define our scope and priorities and ensure the product’s goals, features, and requirements are clear to the whole team, we created a PRD to guide our development process.
DEVELOP
Concept Sketches
I faced a conflict with my team member over feature emphasis and user flow. To resolve this, I initiated an open discussion and suggested we base our decisions on usability testing results from our paper prototypes, allowing users to guide our decisions.
Wireframes
[DESCRIPTION]
Visual Design
I wanted to create a nostalgic, and cozy visual design that felt warm and familiar. I focused on making it approachable and inviting, with subtle details to help users feel at ease and emotionally connected.
Final style tile
After discussing with my teammate, we agreed upon the style tile below. We also defined visual features that will make up our design system to ensure consistency throughout the app.
TEST & ITERATE
RITE testing
Using the RITE method, we conducted iterative testing on a small group of participants for each version of our prototypes to gather valuable feedback.
Testing Methodology
To ensure consistency, we developed testing procedures for our paper and digital prototypes.
Objective 🎯
Evaluate the usability, understandibility, and overall user experience of our prototype, with a focus on the clarity of the distinction between journals and letters and the intuitiveness of the layout and navigation. Is it easy and intuitive to create and send a letter?
Testing Procedure ☑️
Introduction of ourselves, context, and concept of app.
Present home screen — explain purpose of prototype, limitation, and basic elements of screen to progress through task; minimal instructions throughout.
Give them task to write and send letter.
Note any points of confusion, hesitation, and offhanded commentary.
Conduct follow up interview.
Questions❓❓
How intuitive did you find the navigation? At what points did you feel lost or unsure of what to do next?
Were there any features or terminology you found confusing?
Describe your experience completing the task. What portions felt intuitive, and which ones required more thought?
Is there anything else regarding functionality or design that you would like to talk about ?
Iterations
We put our med-fi prototype to the test by conducting a heuristic evaluation. Our prototype was evaluated by 6 Stanford undergraduate and graduate students. We reviewed and implemented changes for our high-fidelity prototype, with the revisions seen below.
Onboarding for letter-writing
Users were unclear about available features and how to navigate the letter-writing tool.
Developed an onboarding process to guide users through interface and highlight key tools.
More flexible saving features
Users were concerned about the risk of losing unfinished letters.
Introduced 2 saving methods to ensure flexibility and ease through saving options spanning the entire user flow.
External sharing capabilities
Users expressed wanting to share letters with users who aren't on the app.
Created the option to share to external social apps.
DELIVER
Proposing our Solution
We developed a convince document to share our insights and propose our solution to BOSP. The full document can be viewed here.
Screenshot of our Convince Document
E-mail sent to BOSP Director
CONCLUSION
What I'd do differently next time
Expect the unexpected: Given the resistance we faced recruiting interviewees, I saw the importance of having backup plans. In the future, I’d prepare alternative data collection methods and establish structured fallback strategies to keep the project moving smoothly.
Let the users decide: To resolve conflicts with a team member over feature priorities and user flows, I used user testing to validate our assumptions. Testing both viewpoints allowed us to make decisions grounded in user feedback. When in doubt, let the users decide!
Keep it real (and realistic): Through our interviews, we primarily uncovered issues beyond what a digital solution could address. To avoid this, I’d prioritize early scoping discussions and feasibility assessments to clarify the problems we can realistically solve. Setting boundaries would let us present broader issues as separate insights, avoiding scope creep.
Getting buy-in like a pro: Building stronger stakeholder relationships could have greatly benefited our project. Next time, I’d invest more upfront in stakeholder mapping and expectation-setting sessions to uncover potential resistance points and guide tailored communication efforts.
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