In 10 weeks, we collaborated to produce an innovative way to connect families across both distances and work commitments. We believe we have made something remarkable that could really address a problem that affects families across the US.

We received largely positive feedback from user testing from both parents and adults, and have indicated promise towards utilizing our concept. That is not to say that there aren’t issues with the design we’d like to improve, if given the time. User testing showed that emojis were not as important as we’d originally thought, for instance, but utilizing them to produce something relatable for both users (an inside joke, for example) showed interest among our user group. For the future, we’d like to see this idea better implemented, and measure if the feature could be retooled to empathize better with users.

For our future scope, we’d like to recommend exploring the aging parent-working adults relationship to extend to logistics, feasibility, and a solidified idea on how our concept could benefit families across oceans as a tool to keep them connected.

Next steps and improvements:

• Creating more features for the tech-savvy working children to use, some people mentioned the idea of a live photo or implementing video taking features.

• Utilize the notepad function to create other features such as note taking and making to-do lists.

• Implement the same solution on a device at home or at work, such as a refrigerator.

• Simplify the process even more- what if the prompt idea could be translated into emotion cards that can be used to quickly show emotion?

• Utilize buttons that have “depth”.