Why do this project?
Abusive relationships are a problem, and everyone knows someone who's been in one.
Rather than trying to repair the psychological and physical damage to people after they escape an abusive relationship, what if we could prevent it entirely?
I came up with the concept of an app to check for red flags in relationships, but first I needed to verify that this would serve my impetus.
Rather than trying to repair the psychological and physical damage to people after they escape an abusive relationship, what if we could prevent it entirely?
I came up with the concept of an app to check for red flags in relationships, but first I needed to verify that this would serve my impetus.
initial data collection
The initial survey to collect demographic and other quantitative data on why people got into and stayed in abusive relationships was conducted via google forms, and posted on various social media such as Reddit and Facebook.
The survey was done this way due to constraints of time and resources. Given the chance again, I would utilize a survey recruiting company to grab a much wider pool of participants.
Of the 400 post views, the survey got 15 respondents. Of those 15 respondents, 5 people expressed interest in a follow up interview to go deeper into their experiences.
Affinity mapping
I affinity mapped in order to find patterns within the data.
Some of the most prominent patterns I found were regarding the exit process, the internal and external motivating factors for leaving the relationship, and the demographics of the relationships. I also included competitive analysis.
User Journeys
I came to two ideal user journeys for my app, each portraying a different use case.
One is Jess, who has been fighting with her long term boyfriend and thinks she might be "crazy", but isn't quite sure.
The other is Nate, who is going on casual dates and wishes to see relationship red flags prior to getting into a steady relationship.
Sitemap/Wireflow
The wireflow provides a good idea of the site navigation for LoveMeNot and how the screens will flow together, to reduce cognitive overload and enable the app to be used in high stress situations.
Designing the UI
From my research, I pulled that the use cases necessitated a UI kit that reduced cognitive load and made the app easy to use in any stressful situation.
the final product and impact
With all of this in mind, I came up with the app LoveMeNot. this app provides a quiz of red flags in relationships, a space to take notes, and customized resources, all locally saved to the phone to be as discreet as possible for any situation.
there were a few suggested features such as the ability to add your own red flags and create a database of more obscure ones, perhaps leveraging AI to pull experiences from different written accounts of survivors on the internet.
However, the app was generally praised by testers for being an easy way to check their partner's behavior before it was too late.
