MindfulMates: Relationships Made Sustainable

By Katelyn Mei, Yerim Heo, Hawa Drammeh, Pu Thavikulwat

Relationships are associated with better health, longer life, reduced stress, discovery of oneself, and overall happiness, if done right. People in relationships want to be seen, heard, and understood by their partner. The crux of a successful & sustainable relationship involves one showing active care for their partner, and open & healthy communication accompanied by a willingness to work through conflicts as they emerge. Poor or unhealthy communication can lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, and frustrations that may render one’s relationship unsustainable.

After an extensive user research on people–age between 18 and 30– in various type of relationships, we found that poor communication can manifest in different ways:

1. One may feel that their partner is uninterested in them and/or does not feel cared for when the other does not check up on them.
2. When conflicts arise between couples, both partners might not respond in a healthy way such as shutting down / stonewalling in a conversation. Unhealthy responses can escalate conflicts and leave the root of conflicts unaddressed, which can be harmful to relationships in the long term.

Design Proposal

With these issues in mind, we came up with our design: MindfulMates, a product which helps couples cultivate sustainable relationships by creating good check-in and conflict response habits.

MindfulMates includes a pair of robots, in sync with a UI application which enables couples to update their moods in real-time. Based on our research, we designed MindfulMates to hone in on two key features which address the aforementioned manifestations of poor communication in relationships.

With MindfulMates, users can…

1. Send fun interactive check-in messages to their partners
2. Communicate gently to their partner when they need to spend time alone or cool down during a conflict or other stressful times

Our design process follows the guidelines of iterative design.

Paper Prototype

UI Design

Task 1: Checking in with your partner → [ example: sending an orange smiley face with a voice note ]

Task 2: Taking time off from your partner → [ example: initiating “take time off” mode ]

Usability Testing

During a heuristic evaluation we received advice and made changes accordingly in terms of 1) User Control & Freedom, 2) Visibility of System Status, and 3) Consistency & Standards.

We chose a diverse set of participants–who have or had experience of romantic relationships–for our usability tests considering how dynamic relationships can be.

During all of our tests, we asked users to attempt to complete a set of defined tasks, such as:

• Attempt to send your partner who is on vacation a fun interactive check in
• Attempt to send a voice message with a blue background
• Attempt to signal to your partner you need some time off

Results & Key Takeaways

Throughout the usability test, users admired the simplicity of our product and how straightforward it was to achieve their desired tasks. This feedback supported our overall goal of having a minimalist UI that would not stress users out.

Final Design

Design changes from paper to digital

In our final design, we added confirmation screens and activity logs to ensure users know which step they have completed. Meanwhile, we designed a page to show both users’ statuses and indication on disabled functionalities when take time off mode is activated. In addition, we resized the robot on the screen and repositioned the send button to improve visual clarity. Finally, users are offered ways to save colors or choose from a diverse range of colors so that they have more flexibility in crafting their messages.

Task 1: Checking in with your partner

Task 2: Taking time off from your partner

Example: Pressing the robot head down to turn on the “take time off” mode

Throughout our iterative process of design, our creativity and ideas were fruitfully informed and challenged by our user research. From asking a very big question–how we can help sustain relationships–to learning about the needs of people in real-life relationships, we narrowed our focus to how to help people communicate easier and better. Our user research inspires us to come up with MindfulMates, a pair of physical robots to help translate physical actions to verbal communication, to help partners express their thoughts to each other in multimodal ways beyond screens. Knowing that healthy communication requires attention and effort, we design MindfulMates to be people’s little helpers. While we design our product for partners in romantic relationships, we imagine MindfulMates can be part of every kind of relationship. As we constantly learn to make relationships sustainable, MindfulMates help us communicate effectively and smoothly.