Initially we conducted exploratory interviews with 6 interviewees from various backgrounds. Some where international students moving away from home for the first time and others were experienced movers relocating for work.

To understand the pain points and experiences of users of varied demographics who have moved in the recent past.

Students and working professionals from various backgrounds such as international and local movers, first time and veteran movers, working professionals and students etc.

We created an interview guide with all the questions we intended to ask the interviewees. We grouped the type of questions into 5 parts: Ice breakers, general, personal, pain points and actionable.

The major pain points of the moving experience are: the breaking of community ties, gathering useful information about the new locality, and coordinating the moving logistics.

Most of our participants spoke about how important the people was where they lived and when they moved. A recurring theme was how goodbyes and moving is hard, but it is a much better experience when you have friends who have gone through it.

We wanted to understand the insights gathered from our exploratory interviews further, so we facilitated some activities to be done with participants such as experience maps, journey maps, media solicitation and card sorting.

To deeper understand the insights and pain points in the moving experience that have not been discovered through exploratory interviews.

Students and young working professionals between the ages of 22 and 30 who have recently moved.

We created an interview guide so as to streamline the process of interviewing and moderating activities. We specified instructions for 3 activities: Media solicitation, experience mapping and journey mapping

We gave instructions to one of our participants who was in the process of moving to record their journey, process and the various pain points they encountered along the way.

A journey mapping activity was done with one of our participants who was had moved internationally for his studies. From his journey map it was evident that the hardest part about the move was saying goodbyes and leaving family.

A simple word association activity was conducted with one of our participants as a warm up exercise as well as to map out their general emotions and feelings towards different parts of the moving process. Then that participant created a journey map, showcasing her moving process and how each phase felt.

As previously established with the exploratory interviews, breaking of community ties, saying goodbye to friends and family as well as anxiety regarding the logistics of the move were the most recurring themes.

We hypothesized that a successful and happy move occurs when the mover is able to develop a sense of belonging in their new surroundings.

From our initial round of interviews and activities, we found out how important “connections” are for a person before, during and after a move. We wanted to delve deeper and understand this topic of sense of belonging further.

As we were researching, we came across the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs where the need for love and belonging were a key component and the link between physiological needs and self actualization.
This was in line with our hypothesis that sense of belonging is a key component for a successful move.

Upon further research on sense of belonging and how it can be achieved, we found this “Qualities of Belonging Index”. This index talks about all the qualities required at some level for a person to feel a sense of belonging. Taking all our interviews into account, we decided to focus on Access, Connectedness, Familiarity and Safety as the key indicators for a successful move where the mover gets a sense of belonging.

To further test out which out of the 4 qualities aforementioned (Access, Connectedness, Familiarity and Safety) were most important to our audience, we carried out a survey.

To get quantitative information about how important are the various aspects such as connectedness, familiarity, access and safety, for a mover to cultivate a sense of belonging

5-10 minute survey  was created using google forms. Mainly created questions that allow the participant to choose from 1-7 for a given scenario. Some questions had the option for the participant to elaborate further on their answers.

From the survey the one thing that stood out was, how the highest percentage of participants felt that having contacts was the most important thing for them to feel settled. We were initially expecting “Safety” to also be something most of the participants would find important, but we were surprised to see that it was pretty low in their concerns. The rest of the questions were answered in a wide variety of ways.

From the various insights of our research we concluded that having a sense of belonging in their new surroundings is the way for mover to have a good moving experience.

From the interviews, secondary research and survey results we concluded that community is the most important factor for the movers to develop a sense of belonging.

Hence, we decided to tackle the issue of community for our new movers.

The main persona we chose was Sarah, a 26 year old first time international mover.

Studies have shown that the younger generations find it harder to create connections and are more open to make them through digital platforms.

Gen Z & Millennials are expected to move the most for better work & study opportunities.

And also, Gen Z & Millennials have the biggest market size in the world.

Taking all this research and the persona into consideration, we brainstormed and finally arrived upon the following how might we for our project:

While looking at the competitive landscape of other services there were dealing with building community and a sense of belonging, we came across these which we categorised into keywords such as Global, Local, Open, Exclusive.

WIth our how might we as the north star, we brainstormed with 5 prompts, and arrived at 56 concepts. The common themes were building something together, team challenges, clubs and meet ups.

These concepts were then distilled down into 5 concepts. Story boards were also created for these 5 concepts. They were:

Validation interviews were conducted with 7 people. They were a healthy mix of introverts, extroverts, students, business owners, gym buffs and couch potatoes. The storyboards created were used to conduct these interviews.

As shown in the graph below, 3BFF the sharing and learning platform had the most engagement by far. Most of the participants were interested in the idea, but many had a fair share of concerns. Some of the concerns stated by participants were, safety concerns as well as authenticity issues.

To further delve deeper into why 3BFF and its “building connections by sharing and learning skills” ethos was popular among the participants, we did some secondary research.

From the articles we read we understood that sharing hobbies and skills and learning from each other are one of the primary ways in which humans make connections. This secondary research backs up what we found from our validation.

Taking all the research and validation into consideration, we created 3BFF, a service that allows new movers to make connections in their new surroundings by sharing and learning skills from locals and other new comers.

3BFF is an app that helps users to create connections by learning and sharing skills with each other. Newcomers and localites are matched into mixed groups of three based on their interests, so that they can learn and teach what they want.

The storyboard created for validation were refined according to the concerns learned from the validation interviews such as safety concerns as well as authenticity issues.

Basically, all you have to do as a new mover is, choose 3 topics you are interested in learning and 3 that you would like to teach. Then you upload some proof that shows you practicing that skill you claim to teach. The app does the rest, by connecting you with two other people who have complementary interests.
You can chat with the group then set up a time for a video call on the app, which is the final step of the vetting process. There is an option to exit a group any time.

We created a short prototype demo of our product using figma to further our validation.

I learned a lot about interviewing and validating from this project. I understood how a little change in phrase was enough for the participant to go down a completely different route. It was important as an interviewer that I was as neutral as possible (this was quite difficult for me because I am an enthusiastic person in general). All in all, words matter, and we have to be very careful in how we ask questions as well as show ideas during validation.

This quote was something I picked up during the beginning of the project and it has stuck with me throughout. Separate your need to self express from the interview. Be an active listener. Just act as a paddle to direct the conversation so as to get maximum possible information regarding the needs, insights and emotions.

This was by far the biggest research project I had undertaken and there were a lot of hiccups along the way. We had to go back a few times and iterate and make sure that our research was solid and our idea valid. This project gave me a special appreciation to the iterative and messy thing that research is. Quite often you might feel lost, but just trust the design process and in the end everything works out. And of course, there is no end, we keep iterating, prototyping and validating!