Creating digital communal spaces to connect youth to in-person communities.
Product designer, UX researcher, brand designer
30 weeks
A growing problem in available youth communal spaces.
As appealing ways to satisfy youth desire and need for connection, social media and other digital platforms can interfere with day to day life and social relationships.
Loneliness rates in youth are significant.
Between 17–21% of individuals aged 13-29 reported feeling lonely, with the highest rates among teenagers (World Health Organization 2025 global report)
Their problematic social media use is also high.
40% of adolescents are classified as having problematic social media use or are at moderate risk (2018 study on Health Behaviour in School-aged Children)
So why are youth turning to digital platforms?
In this crucial period of social development, barriers prevent youth from accessing the physical spaces that fulfill their need for connection.
Testing my hypothesis that youth are struggling with finding in-person communities.
I conducted an anonymous survey with 19 participants aged 18 to 24 with the goal of understanding their community preferences and experience finding communities.
Key Insight 1
There's a lack of accessible physical communal spaces and awareness of such spaces.
53% of participants preferred engaging in physical communities but noted the lack of outreach, which is often from friends.
Key Insight 2
Pandemic isolation and community incompatability makes it difficult to join in-person communities.
The majority of participants mentioned distance, age of communities, and personal introversion as drawbacks.
The current user experience based on participant responses.
The experience of the primary user group presents the issue of searching and joining a compatible community. Identifying secondary user groups revealed opportunities to leverage their strengths to support the challenges of the primary user group.
Exploring what already exists.
I looked into the platforms used to find in-person communities, conducting a competitve analysis and seeing what solutions youth are coming up with.
Key Insight 1
Most friendship or community building platforms feel inauthentic or intimidating.
Swipe-based apps feel shallow while forum platforms require a level of self initiative that people may not be ready for.
Key Insight 2
Youth have the desire and ability to form communities, they just need the right resources.
In recent times, there have been various youth-run initiatives to build community through social media.
Connecting people to community needs to be adjusted to better fit youth's needs.
My research presented pain points in the existing methods of joining physical communities through digital means.
Addressing user needs and validating features through testing.
Informed by my competitive analysis and user needs, I designed features that I tested with users. I evaluated the initial prototype with A/B testing and having users go through the user flow.
Accounting for long-term community building.
The user flow provides a natural progression from small groups, to bigger groups, to community groups as a way to address the lack of public gatherings. The secondary user flows become other methods of bringing awareness to existing community groups.
Zoom to view system map
Villager is an app that connects, grows, and sustains communities.
The platform ensures that not only is the act of finding in-person communities easy, but that the whole process is enjoyable and comfortable.
Customize your experience with the personality questionnaire.
Take the questionnaire, a quick set of questions to better understand your interests, personality within social settings, and the area you're located.
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Connect with others to attend events.
Be grouped with people also attending the event you're interested in to get to know them prior.
Socializing made comfortable.
Get to know group members with provided conversations starters.
Experience natural community growth.
Groups can choose to mesh with other groups, become public community groups, or stay as is.
Explore different opportunities to connect with others.
Join public community groups, attend events, and visit third spaces partnered with Villager.
Research is continuous in the design process.
Throughout this project, I went back and forth between research and design to validate my design decisions. This highlighted the importance of not being too caught up with an initial idea, but rather let research shape the design as it goes. Going forward, I hope to prototype the secondary screens that were out of the project timeline.
While there are challenges with finding community, youth are resilient.
Through the research process, I found that youth continue to find ways to connect with others, in more ways than I assumed. It is encouraging to know that the human desire for connection continues to thrive.