Friendzone
This is a social media app that divides a user’s content and friend-list among three different groups of people:
Friends, Family, and Followers.
Overview
PROBLEM
People have different levels of comfort with certain friends on social media. They still want to remain connected with them, but they don’t want to share everything with them.
Most privacy features are intended for strangers or the public; they don’t apply to people who are already in your friend list. This makes it difficult to hide content from people without completely severing ties with them.
SOLUTION
A friend list hierarchy that lets users to share information separately amongst different groups of people will allow them to have more control over their privacy on social media.
The intended groups will be friends, family, and followers. This is because friends and family are usually the two closest social circles that people have. The “followers” section accounts for everyone else who isn’t as close to the user, but still wants to connect with them.
Friends
Family
Followers
Research
USER INTERVIEWS
I interviewed my roommates about their relationships with their friends and family in order to gain some insight on how they would interact with them through social networks. I wanted to figure out which people they were closest to and how much they were willing to share with them.
Everyone had a closer bond with their family members, but their friendships also had unique characteristics that their family relationships sometimes didn’t have.
Regardless of which group they were closer to, they still interacted with each of them differently.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
The common privacy settings for most social media apps are private, public, or only friends/followers.
Most apps label user contacts as either “friends” or “followers” and these words are often considered interchangeable among social media.
However in Friendzone, they’ll have different meanings because your friends will be closer to you than your followers.
Only Facebook has a “family” feature, but it’s mostly used as a title and it isn’t available to select when making posts private.
"I'm closer with my family, but I talk to my friends more."
-Alex Smith
USER PERSONAS
Since I was working with a limited audience, I created user personas that fit best for each category (friend, family, follower).
The bar graph on the right is meant to show the different levels of interaction the user has with each group.
JOURNEY MAP
Jessica is a college student who recently turned 21.
She had a fun party and wants to post her favorite moments on her social media account.
She’s not quite comfortable sharing this part of her life with her parents yet, but she still wants to involve them somehow!
Planning
TASK FLOW
This task flow shows the steps a user would take to create and privatize their posts.
To increase efficiency, a new post will automatically upload to the page the user was currently on when creating the post.
For example, creating a new post while exploring the “Family” page will categorize that post in the family section, unless it is changed.
If a post is created on the homepage, it will be made available to everyone.
WIREFRAMES
These wireframes showcase the different ways people can divide their content on the website.
PROTOTYPE
- The icons at the top-center of the homepage make it easier for you to know which page you’re viewing and posting to.
- The homepage is a combination of all three pages, so you can explore your feed like normal.
- Select which groups of friends can see your post with the icons on the right.
- Multiple pages can be selected or just one, depending on your preference.
- Profile pages will have different request options for each “friendzone”.
- If you’re comfortable enough with someone, you can add them to multiple groups.