Connect+: Reduce feelings of loneliness on campus using A.I.

Problem:
A bit of time ago, the Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, issued a loneliness epidemic, cautioning on the adverse effects of loneliness on the mental and physical body. This project is a further investigation of feelings of loneliness and feelings of belonging, specifically on the Northeastern campus. Part of the Northeastern experience is to participate in co-op, study abroad, a dialogue, and many other opportunities that take place outside of the Boston campus. Although this may allow students to have a global experience, it has caused students to feel lonely and find it difficult to make authentic connections with their peers, ultimately contributing to the Surgeon General’s loneliness epidemic.

Preliminary Research:
To better understand why loneliness persists so widely, we began by examining how people define community today and how technology has reshaped that definition. We reviewed the work of experts who describe how social media has altered our sense of intimacy, how online spaces now rival in-person communities, and how forces such as surveillance capitalism and the attention economy have monetized human connection. These systems have deliberately leveraged psychology to maximize engagement, often at the expense of their original promise to provide open, authentic communication and connection.
Through this lens, we explored how such dynamics shape people’s ability to form community and influence cultural attitudes toward intimacy. We also examined historical perspectives on what makes individuals feel close to one another, alongside the deeper meaning of loneliness and its profound effects on both mental and physical health.

Participatory Design Sessions:
We conducted bi-weekly participatory design sessions with a diverse group of students, including PhD candidates, graduate students, undergraduates, first-years, and transfer students. The purpose of these sessions was to:
- Gain a deeper understanding of the varied experiences and feelings of loneliness across different student populations
- Identify how our ideas could be distinguished from existing apps and platforms addressing social connection
- Receive direct feedback on proposed concepts and the usability of our prototypes
- Ensure that solutions were inclusive, reflecting the needs of students with different backgrounds, academic levels, and social experiences
- Validate whether our design assumptions aligned with lived student realities rather than researcher bias
- Co-create solutions with students to foster a greater sense of ownership, which could increase long-term adoption and impact
- Capture evolving perspectives over time, allowing us to refine designs iteratively and track whether interventions addressed real challenges

Each session centered on a specific discussion theme, such as:
- How students approach the process of building community
- The use of free time: how students spend it, what prevents them from making plans, and the anxieties tied to reaching out to others
- The challenges of making and maintaining friendships, whether new or longstanding, long-distance or close by
- Identifying the most desirable features in a social app
- Reflections on how social media, despite its promise of connection, can leave people feeling more distant from their loved ones

Our ideas:
Through this process, we generated 15 unique concepts. Guided by feedback from the participatory design sessions, we refined and merged overlapping features, ultimately narrowing them down to five distinct ideas.

1) Proximate
This app will help facilitate spontaneous hangouts with friends based on proximity and availability. On campus, many people become friends through proximity, often due to shared classes, clubs, or living situations. When these factors are altered or eliminated, some friendships don’t last. This app is designed to be a social platform that uses your schedule and location permissions to mimic a spontaneous run-in experience. An application akin to Apple’s Find My Friends, but with more interactive and engaging features. The structure falls somewhere between Life 360 and Snapchat’s Friend Map, extracting the best features to create an engaging experience that fosters connection.

2) CloserCues
This application is focused on recording the progress of relationships in your life. Whether it’s new relationships, best friends, or family members, this app will track how often you have contacted them and how to become closer to your loved ones. With busy schedules that include academics and extracurricular activities, keeping track of the last time you checked in with someone important to you can be challenging.

3) Synchronicity
The Synchronicity application will allow you to have short and long, mutually convenient voice calls with your friends and family. The app will establish a connection only when it is mutually convenient for both parties, which will be automatically detected. This will encourage communication among people who otherwise might have trouble finding time to talk, and it will also encourage both very brief (i.e., a few seconds) and long voice conversations.

4) Why Us?
This app encourages quick conversation among people in close proximity by gamifying a simulated spontaneous interaction. It encourages talking to your first to third degree connections within the Northeastern circle to have the ultimate outcome of making the community at large more familiar.

5) Compatibility
This application presents you with profiles and prompts every day for you to assess and answer. As time goes on, the algorithm will get to know you, your preferences, and your network better and better. Then, at a random time every month or so, you will be matched with one person who you’re deemed algorithmically compatible with. This app leverages mystery as a driving force for you to meet new people outside of your regular circle.