“WeChat”

👏 Sr. UX Designer at Providence Healthcare — Emoti-Con Judge

I love that you all included how users find and learn about your app in the App and Play Stores! I feel like it's important to give your audience this type of information when presenting or pitching an idea. We all have ideas, sometimes called mental models, of how things work. Sometimes these ideas have gaps or holes. By filling them in you present a clearer picture of your idea and leave a positive impression on the person you are communicating with.

I also felt seeing the screen where the user picks topics makes me think you all thought about personalization which is a smart idea to keep users coming back to your app. That really stood out to me and is something I wanted to highlight in my review. :)

The slide deck and mockups clearly helped me understand the user journey and how you all thought about visualizing the solution to the problem you decided to solve.

I think it would be a good idea to explore Apple's and Google's design systems for their smartphones. While they are similar, they each treat components like buttons and patterns like navigation slightly differently. You can make an app look and feel however you like, though I believe in using familiar and well-design elements when possible to help reduce user confusion, design, and development time.

Some features I liked were the ability for users to add other users to a video or text chat. Very well thought through! I think that would be a useful and wanted feature for communication apps like yours. I also liked your strategy to ensure people don't lie about their age and then display that age on the user interface. Being a parent of two high schoolers I worry about who is on the other side of the video games my sons play. I also like how you gave users different ways to find topics to join and chat in. Not everyone finds things the same way. Some like using search boxes and some like seeing the options and clicking through to find what they want. I thought it was cool you all figured that out and implemented it in your app.

Congratulations on creating WeChat! I imagine the journey has been both hard and rewarding. I hope you all keep going, trying to solve other problems using technology in this wonderful world and age we are living in.

👏 We Need 2 Talk & The Equity & Disproportionality Lab at Temple University — Emoti-Con Judge

This team has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about how teens communicate online. You do a great job of talking through your design process and demonstrating your idea in your pitch presentation. As a parent and an educator, I think a lot about the kinds of "guardrails" that would help teens communicate in a safe, authentic way online. Your work here engages with a lot of these questions and I look forward to seeing how your idea continues to develop!

👏 Engineer at Engineering — Emoti-Con Judge

As an educator (and a human during the pandemic) I see the need to reconnect and reclaim the sense of community and friendship that was diminished in recent years. I love your app in that it allows communication between friends and also others with different points of view. I think you have a great idea with this communication app. I also like the "topics" section- to draw people who want to discuss something together. Your detailed images of both Android and iPhone models were excellent and provided a good "pitch" to understand your vision. A good app for this time of re-connecting!

👏 Program Manager at Meta — Emoti-Con Judge

I appreciate that this app creates community and connection through technology. I specifically liked the focus on "topics," which enables users to share more of themselves than they might without prompts and connect with others in new ways. It also removes a barrier to entry by immediately providing a conversation topic and way for people to come together. This is a difficult challenge many products face so great job!