pair: A product ideation case study

pair is an ideated prototype that won “most aesthetic prototype” during the 2021 Product Buds Protothon. The mission of pair is to provide users a sense of accountability to complete tasks through virtual companionship from someone taking part in the same activity in real time

Welcome to pair — let’s explore!

Commitment is hard. No, we don’t mean relationships. We’re talking about committing to those New Year’s goals to workout every day. You do a great job of hitting the gym for a week or two (maybe even a month if you’re lucky) but then *poof*! You stop. We get it, life happens. The issue is staying accountable for yourself. After some time feeling motivated and Google Calendar reminders for the gym, that new lifestyle you wanted disappears. You attend club and work meetings but not the gym, despite committing to both. Why? Because slacking’s easy when you’re only depending on yourself–no one’s depending on you. A study on the social facilitation effect shows that performance of a task generally improves when in the presence of others due to their level of support. With this in mind, we designed pair, an app promoting accountability to complete activities through virtual human interaction.

Think virtual co-working or study streams . . . but instead of just those two, imagine having company while cooking, reading, or washing dishes. Through muted interaction, you have the freedom to focus on your tasks at hand, all while having companionship throughout.

User Interviews

Through user interviews targeted towards study live (virtual video-call study sessions with simultaneous silent studying) attendees, we discovered that everyone had one goal: to get work done with others. We also discovered that 92% of users said they are more productive in groups, and would prefer groups of < 5 to work with. Many of them wanted to avoid distractions specifically from their phones and social media, which led us to build pair as a mobile app. A 2017 study found that working out in a group lowers stress by 26% and significantly improves quality of life, while those who exercised individually put in more effort but experienced no significant changes in their stress level and a limited improvement to quality of life.

By providing users the ability to book time slots for completing an activity (with a pair‘d user doing the same thing in real-time), pair facilitates productivity through companionship. Congrats, you’ve just found a workout buddy!

pair’s here to solve a big problem.

Busy lifestyles, isolation from others, and an unpredictable daily schedule makes it hard to engage in an activity and maintain a routine without a structured approach. A lack of accountability for completing an activity creates commitment issues and as a result, a routine’s not productive.

Market Opportunity

An estimated 188.9 million adult Americans (74.02% of the population) made a New Year’s resolution — including a whopping 91.85% of Gen Zers. However, 12.23% of Americans who make a New Year’s resolution believe they will fail to achieve their goal. That totals to an estimated 23.1 million Americans who could benefit from pair.

Original brainstorming for pair

Pair’s ideation process

• Idea 1: This first idea focused on real-time activity completion but lacked a scheduling/reminder feature in-app. This developed holes, as it can be difficult to stay accountable without anything to help with it. This was a very vague idea, and there was no set method of accountability-tracking. Everything was pretty much up to the user to figure out.
• Idea 2: The second idea focused on habit-building through relationship-building (either friendship, romantic, or platonic partnership) task completion. This posed many issues, as the social connectivity market is already very saturated, and tying in a focus on habit-building and activity-completion poses risk for the app’s users to organically pivot pair’s mission. We didn’t want another Omegle type of platform.
• Idea 3: The third and final idea (taking bits and pieces from the first two) focused on the method of pairing users together and ensuring accountability. A lasting concern is the development of complex machine-learning algorithms to match users based on interests, however, it is not very difficult or impossible to build them.

Competition

1. Pair is not a social media platform, as it does not offer the facilitation of friendships and relationships, rather it focuses more on short-term companionship to allow productivity and successful task-completion.
2. Virtual co-working, study streams, and other platforms: These existing platforms (such as Study Stream, Flow Club, in-person co-working spaces, and other platforms) allow for simultaneous productivity through completing work, however, there are not many other platforms for other activities (focused on productivity) instead of group classes. For instance, there are separate platforms for group meditations, cooking classes, or art classes, yet there is not a centralized platform for all. These existing ones are centered more on instruction, rather than solely productivity and task-completion.

Pair’s user base

pair will be most optimized by users best exemplifying the following criteria:

1. University, college, and higher education students: with busy routines due to in/out of school events, pair offers opportunities to engage in activities with a structured schedule.
2. Post-grad individuals entering the professional world: while transitioning from a structured college environment/schedule to a more freeform, unstructured lifestyle (with possibly a new routine), pair can help adjust to a new routine with companionship and support.
3. Current professionals: professionals that have a generally busy and/or unstructured day to day schedule would find pair a beneficial source of company during monotonous tasks.

Note: The user base for our MVP will be in the United States/Canada only. We’ll use location pinpointing from users to provide activity time slots catered to different time zones. Over time, we’ll expand internationally and add non-English languages.

User Personas

User Journey for Tammy, a current college student looking for a community of friends to engage in hobbies and study with

User Journey for James, a current Financial Analyst who just moved to New York City for his new job

Sample user journeys

1. A college student looking to avoid distraction while studying will use pair to find a study buddy. With a video call of simultaneous partner-studying, the student will not only feel motivated to stay focused due to another person being there, but will also feel less compelled to go on their phone for non-Pair-related activities, as it will pause the video call.
2. A recent college grad who moved to a new city is budget-tight, opting to cook at home majority of the time rather than eating out. With no friends or family nearby, this user will find pair beneficial while cooking a meal, as they will have company on the side engaging in the same task. With a task as cooking (which can often become monotonous or time-demanding), this college grad can 1.) structure time into their schedule to cook (instead of resorting to eating out) or 2.) receive some company in a task that may normally be boring.

Sample User Stories

1. I’m looking for someone’s presence during the same task to encourage me to focus
2. I want to be surrounded by a variety of different people for a sense of community
3. I want to dedicate structured time in my schedule to completing a task or activity
4. I want to develop a consistent routine of structuring time for this task or activity

MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of pair

In this section, we’ll go over three main sections (sign-up, scheduling, and calling) of pair’s prototype

The sign-up process

The sign-up process consists of three prompts for the user to create their account and develop their profile. The “My Pair Usage” section allows users to view metric-driven information about their engagement on the app and productivity levels to maintain engagement

1. The Home Screen: Pair’s home screen displays its logo (a pair of socks), the slogan, and an option to either login to an existing account or create a new account.
2. Create Profile: Pair allows users freedom to customize their profile with their age and activities of interest (these activities can be completed virtually with a partner on the app). They can also view a call history (of past completed activity calls) to review. Since Pair itself is not a social media platform, it does not promote relationship-building, rather productivity and co-working through assorted activities. Because of this, users can attach their socials to their profile.
3. My Pair Usage: in order to retain users and promote pair’s goal of productivity, users can view their activity and time spent on the app (in a portion of their profile), in order to reference their hours of productivity, the number of activities participated in, and more detailed metrics of app usage.

The scheduling process

The scheduling portion displays three steps: identifying an activity to complete, scheduling a time slot, and discovering the partner matched with to complete the activity simultaneously

1. Interested Categories: In this section, the user is prompted to input an activity they seek to complete. Common examples include cooking, studying, meditating, or reading a book.
2. Scheduling Times: After selecting an activity, the user is directed to the scheduling page, where they can be matched “right now”, in which they will be assigned to a partner to complete the activity right away, or they can schedule the activity for another date and/or time. The user can additionally alter the duration of the activity-completion session. The “show me more timeslots” will direct the user to a calendar, where they can schedule much ahead of time.
3. Partner Found: After selecting a time slot, the user is matched with a partner to complete the activity and will be able to see their profile in order to create a more humanistic approach to working together. Rather than putting the user with a random person, pair aims to develop more friendliness and comfort between the users through displaying profiles. Users can follow their partner’s socials as well if they chose. When a user is ready to officially match, they can click “I’m ready, let’s pair!” or can go back to change their time slot if they desire.

The calling process

In the calling process, users will be conducting their activity simultaneously (but still independently) through companionship of their match.

1. Call Screen: When the user is participating in an activity call, they will have a match on the other end performing the same (or similar) activity simultaneously. This partnership is meant for companionship while completing the activity, so there is no obligation to take part in the exact same activity at the exact same time from both parties. There is a sense of independence during these calls. There is an option to switch camera, end the call, or put in simple text messages to their match.
2. Rate Call: After ending a call, a user will rate their session, chose to be matched again with someone, or report the user from the call if a situation of danger or discomfort arose.

Looking Ahead

Currently we’re focusing on the 18–25 age range, but can potentially expand to other age groups. For example, pair could expand to include high schoolers who express a need for accountability partners. There is additionally an opportunity to pursue a more tight-knit sense of companionship through verbal communication during video interactions. We hope to provide more flexibility to users as well with the release of an eventual web application.

Additionally, the option of hosting calls with 2+ people can allow for greater levels of companionship during activities, especially considering the science of how working in groups boosts productivity. Pair would have to deeply analyze the ideal size for group calls, as there is greater potential for disturbance, unsafe behavior, and an overall decrease in productivity due to the larger amount of distractions.

The call itself with the match requires more detailed settings for users, such as restrictions for safety, audio, and video. The potential of settings to lock and unlock calls (keeping audio muted/unmuted respectively throughout the call) and option for messaging or no messaging can develop a more focused environment for users.

Regardless of specific percentages and statistics, companionship and social interaction is a basic human need, and the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how long periods of time without interaction or the normal level of ‘closeness’ between individuals can be harmful. At the end of the day, it’s enjoyable and fulfilling to take part in an activity–especially a rewarding one–with someone else by your side. Whether it’s a big or small accomplishment, we believe that pair can help reach it through virtual support of someone with the same goal in mind.

pair earned the “most aesthetic prototype” award at the Project Jam Protothon, hosted by Product Buds (04/09/2021 - 04/11/2021). This Protothon’s theme was “Social Impact” and it encouraged participants to leverage technological innovation to shape our evolving world and connect different communities/causes to generate larger impact.

pair’s team: Ruhi Sakrikar, Mariko Woodworth, Naomi Chao, Olivia Chao

Special thanks to our mentor, Gloria Liou for supporting us through our ideation process and for the encouraging feedback

If you‘d like to chat more about pair, feel free to contact me (Ruhi Sakrikar) through LinkedIn!

Works Cited

American Osteopathic Association. “Group exercise improves quality of life, reduces stress far more than individual work outs.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 October 2017. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171030092917.htm.

Choi, Catherine. “New Year’s Resolutions Statistics.” Finder.com, 4 Dec. 2020, www.finder.com/new-years-resolution-statistics#:~:text=How%20many%20Americans%20will%20make,increase%20from%20the%20previous%20year.

Cuncic, Arlin. “How Social Facilitation Can Improve Your Performance.” Verywell Mind, 18 Nov. 2020, www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-social-facilitation-4800890.

Gerald R. Ferris, Kendrith M. Rowland. “Social Facilitation Effects on Behavioral and Perceptual Task Performance Measures: Implications for Work Behavior — Gerald R. Ferris, Kendrith M. Rowland, 1983.” SAGE Journals, 1 Jan. 1980, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/105960118300800404.