BuddyLink
Connect through what you love.
Role
UI/UX designer
Timeline
48 hours
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Team
Solo
BACKGROUND & PROBLEM
When new beginnings feel isolating
After graduation, about 33% of college students move to a new state. My sister was one of them. She had just landed her first job in a new city, excited to start fresh, but the excitement quickly faded as she realized how hard it was to make new friends without the built-in community of college life. There were no more dorms, clubs, or casual late-night hangouts — just work, errands, and weekends that felt increasingly quiet.
Seeing her go through that shift made me think: why does making friends as an adult feel so inaccessible? Traditional ways like meeting people at work or through random events are often hit-or-miss. And while there are plenty of dating or networking apps, there aren't many spaces designed solely for forming real connections. Her experience is what inspired the topic for this design challenge.
SOLUTION
Turning isolation into connections
BuddyLink is a social platform designed to help people build meaningful friendships based on shared interests. Users can create personalized profiles, explore like-minded individuals, and schedule real-life meetups, all synced seamlessly with their calendar to make connecting easier and more intentional.
Personalized profile
Users create a profile with personal details and hobbies, allowing BuddyLink to match with like-minded individuals and make finding friends easier.
View profile
Users can browse through profiles of potential friends, exploring their interests, hobbies, and personal details.
Schedule meetups
Users can schedule meetups through messaging, making it easier to connect in real life and turn online interactions into lasting friendships.
Integrated calendar
Schedule activities sync to the user's calendar, with the option to export it an any format for easy access.
DESIGN PROCESS
Designing for the people who need it most
Interviewing to understand the struggles
Given that this was a 48-hour design challenge, time was limited, which meant I had to quickly gather insights to inform my design. To ensure the app met the needs of the target audience, I reached out to my sister and her friends—new college graduates who had moved out of state for work. They represented the perfect demographic, as they had firsthand experience with the challenges of making new friends in a new city. Through informal interviews, I gathered valuable feedback about their struggles with loneliness, the difficulty of finding like-minded people.
Talking with them validated my idea for creating BuddyLink, an app that connect individuals with others who share hobbies, making it easier to find friends and join activities they love.
Out of the 7 people I interviewed, 4 had used platforms like Bumble BFF and Meetup. They all shared the same frustration: the people they met through these platforms rarely turned into genuine friendships, primarily because they felt the connections were surface-level and lacked common interests beyond just meeting new people.
So, for this design challenge, I wanted to design an app that bridges this gap, making it easier to find real friends who share similar interests.
Differentiating BuddyLink with different apps
What makes BuddyLink different from other friendship finding apps? Existing social apps do not fully address the friendship-building experience.
From concept to structure
I started by creating a user flow diagram to visualize all the app's features and pages, ensuring an optimized user flow and experience.
After gaining a better understanding of the flow, I began designing mid-fidelity wireframes to refine the layout and structure, focusing on usability and visual clarity.
One of the key moments in the design process was deciding on the navigation structure. Initially, the layout was overly complex, making it hard to intuitively flow through features. I had to simplify it to make the experience more seamless, while still retaining the app’s exploratory feel.
Quick branding decisions
Even though this was a short challenge so branding wasn’t the main focus, I still wanted the app to have a clear design language. I chose purple as the primary color because it evokes a sense of trust and calm, which are two qualities I felt were important for a friendship-focused app. The overall look is simple, soft, and welcoming, just enough to give the product a cohesive feel.
TAKEAWAYS
48 hours taught me to simplify, focus, and listen
The power of simplification: With limited time, I learned the importance of simplifying features. Focusing on core functionalities allowed me to create a more intuitive and streamlined experience for users.
Time management: The time constraint taught me how to manage my time efficiently, prioritizing the most impactful features and ensuring I stayed on track without compromising the overall design quality.
User-centered design is key: Validating ideas through user feedback early on was crucial to refining the product. It helped ensure that the app met the real needs of the target audience.