OVERVIEW
As part of Carnegie Mellon University's Persuasive Design course, I led the design of Phonebooth, a voice-based social connection app that helps Generation X build meaningful romantic relationships and friendships during life transitions. Unlike traditional photo-centric apps, Phonebooth centers on voice interactions—users build their profiles and chat with others through voice messages, allowing personality and chemistry to shine through naturally.
As the design lead, I drove the end-to-end design process by:
Leading ideation workshops to define key features and user flows
Creating core brand identity and designing main features
Managing design consistency by integrating work from other designers
Maintaining design fidelity through conducting quality assurance with developers
BACKGROUND
RESEARCH
To uncover the root causes behind Gen X's behavior, we conducted focus groups, expert consultations, and interviews, which revealed that what appeared as social media addiction was actually something deeper.
Building on these revelations, we consulted four CMU professors: Julie Saunders, Dan Saffer, Laura Vinchesi, and Raelin Musuraca. As both UX experts and Gen X themselves, they helped us understand how midlife transitions create a cascade of changes, leading many to seek new connections and rebuild their sense of self.
Having shifted our focus from social media use to connection-building challenges, we conducted semi-structured interviews with five Gen X individuals using directed storytelling methodology. This approach helped elicit personal narratives that revealed underlying emotions and motivations.
We used affinity clustering to analyze and synthesize interview insights.
Through affinity clustering, several key themes were identified from the interviews:
REFRAMING
Our research journey helped us realize that increased social media use reflected deeper emotional and social needs, leading us to reframe our problem:
IDEATION
To bring this vision to life, we moved to brainstorming ideas for a platform that helps Gen X find authentic connections. As the design lead, I planned and led the end-to-end design process, from ideation to prototyping and the final handover to developers. The process unfolded in four phases:
I facilitated a workshop that aimed at empathy-building and brainstorming. I asked the team to first imagine themselves as Gen X users and record a self-introduction. This not only built empathy, but also surfaced crucial UX considerations around making voice interactions feel natural and comfortable. I then led a Crazy 8's exercise to encourage the team to brainstorm ideas for our solution.
Crazy 8's exercise
To transition to actionable design decisions, I guided the team through a MoSCoW prioritization exercise (must have, should have, could have, won't have).
This helped us:
Identify core features essential for launch
Create a development roadmap that balanced user needs with technical feasibility
Focus our initial design efforts on high-impact, must-have features
With our MVP features defined, I led the team in visualizing the user journeys from first-time onboarding to daily voice interactions. These flow charts served as our blueprint for subsequent design phases.
The design process was iterative as we explored different ways of visualizing the app. My early design used card-based profiles typical of dating apps, but I realized this did not align with our voice-first philosophy. Hence, I made several crucial design decisions:
SOLUTION
Through multiple iterations, we created Phonebooth, a voice-based dating and social app that helps Gen X find romantic connections and build friendships through audio interactions. As the design lead, I crafted the app's brand identity and designed the main features. I also managed design consistency across the app by integrating the work of other designers with my own, ensuring a cohesive and unified user experience.
I designed the app's signature visual element: a dynamic sound wave ripple effect that appears on the splash screen and during recording. This not only provides engaging visual feedback but also reinforces the app's voice-centric identity.
I designed a registration process that is streamlined for Gen X users—just phone verification, basic details, and a voice introduction. Each profile comes to life through a customizable iPod-inspired interface, a nostalgic touch that lets users express themselves through colors rather than photos.
Each login presents a reflection prompt for users to share memories, goals, and life experiences. These prompts create natural conversation starters and help users build connections through shared experiences.
Users explore connections by swiping through iPod-style interfaces featuring voice responses. Each recording comes with text transcripts for accessibility. They can view profiles to browse more recordings or start conversations by recording voice replies. This reply-to-connect mechanism turns browsing into meaningful conversation.
I designed a messaging experience that prioritizes voice interactions over text. This encourages nuanced, emotionally resonant conversations that text alone cannot convey.
DEVELOPMENT
After finalizing the design, I created detailed documentation for design handover to the developers.
During the development phase, I worked closely with the developers, conducting UX/UI reviews to ensure the coded product maintained design fidelity and met our user experience goals.
SHOWCASE
We presented the fully developed app at our course's final project presentation fair, demonstrating Phonebooth to professors, PhD students, and faculty members. The working product received overwhelmingly positive feedback, particularly for its innovative approach to dating apps and thoughtful consideration of Gen X users' needs.
TAKEAWAYS
Leading this project taught me that the most impactful solutions often emerge from challenging our initial assumptions. By staying open to new insights, we shifted from addressing the surface behavior to solving the root cause.
While our research participants talked about social media usage, their stories revealed deeper emotional needs that were not explicitly stated. This reinforced the importance of reading between the lines during user research and focusing on emotional undertones rather than just surface-level behaviors.
By choosing voice as our primary medium, we realized how breaking conventional boundaries can spark innovations. Sometimes the best solutions emerge not from obvious approaches, but from addressing user needs in unexpected ways.
