Overview

Introducing 200 Hours

200 Hours is a social wellness app inspired by research showing it takes approximately 200 hours to form a close friendship. It helps young adults stay meaningfully connected through check-in reminders, personal notes, and a digital friendship diary.

Time

Mar 2025 - Apr 2025

Role

Product Designer

Mobile

Interaction Design

Prototyping

Literature Review

User Flows

Impact

The final prototype includes 3 key features including:

Check-in Reminders

that promote consistent interaction

Personal Note System

to remember key details and important facts about your friends

Digital Diary

for logging shared moments and memories

Research

Understanding the loneliness problem.

Loneliness is a new epidemic and it's killing Americans like smoking 15 cigarettes a day

Lack of social connection is deeply tied to both physical and mental well-being. It increases the risk of early death by 26%, which is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to the U.S. Surgeon Journal.

Young adults are the loneliest age group, 2 times more than seniors

The rate of loneliness among young adults has increased every year between 1976 and 2019.

While the highest rates of social isolation are found among older adults, young adults are almost twice as likely to report feeling lonely than those over 65.

The hard truth

Welcome to adulthood,
your friendships are no longer the same.

The thing about adult friendship is that it went from a group activity to an individual sport.

— Mel Robbins, best selling author and speaker

The infamous "Great Scatterings"

The Great Scattering happens during the period in your 20s when you graduate, leave school, and suddenly realize that all the people who once lived in the same place and move in the same timeline as you now scattered in a million different directions.

Research from both MIT and Stanford show that proximity is the single biggest factor in determining friendships.

A 2021 University of Kansas study found that it takes around 200 hours of intentional time together to form a close friendship.

Yet few tools exist to help people track, reflect on, or commit to that time investment.

Design Feature 1

Home Screen Check-in Reminder

User goal

Get timely reminders to reconnect with friends, view personalized activity suggestions based on past interactions, and take immediate action to reach out.

Exploration

I explored different home page layouts to see which one feels the most intuitive and support quick decision making to reach out to friends.

V1 Single Card Layout

One friend per screen, scrollable interaction

V2 Grid Layout

Quick scanning across friends, with action menu

V3 Stacked List

Swipe-able actions and quick check off

I ultimately chose Version 3 for its flexibility, scalability, and support for quick, intuitive interactions. Unlike the grid layout, which can feel visually unbalanced with an odd number of cards, the stacked list adapts well to varying amounts of content. It also enables swipe gestures for actions like snoozing or skipping, offering more depth than a simple check-off experience.

Design Feature 2