After graduating from high school or college, many young adults have friends around the world. Busy schedules can make it hard to stay in touch, whether the relationship is romantic or platonic. Dispatch helps people in meaningful long-distance relationships stay connected more frequently and easily.

Young people use digital tools to stay connected with long-distance friends and partners. Currently, 75% of college students are in a long-distance relationship, and 99% have a friend attending a different university. The primary difficulties are a lack of communication and feelings of loneliness.

Dispatch makes it easy to share updates through quick video or audio chats, whether someone is connecting with a friend three time zones away or a new significant other. Conversation prompts help users catch up and spark engaging discussions.

I interviewed young adults and reviewed existing research to understand how people stay connected, what gets in the way, and what makes long-distance relationships work. I used what I learned to create personas and empathy maps.

Using insights from my discovery research, I organized Dispatch’s main areas through information architecture and mapped out a user flow to support how people would stay connected with long-distance friends.

My goal was to make Dispatch feel familiar so users could easily transition from their phone’s default messaging app, with the eventual goal of making Dispatch their primary messaging app. Since Dispatch stands out through its unique features, I focused on familiarity rather than a radical UI redesign.

I love exploring color psychology and how it shapes components and brands. I chose Dispatch’s signature yellow for its connection to friendship and happiness.

With the component library established, I started on medium-fidelity screens for Dispatch’s mobile app. These designs clarified my wireframes and helped me communicate with technical leads about feasibility. I continued refining the content, branding, and spacing.

I tested Dispatch’s high-fidelity screens and prototype with several participants from my discovery interviews. Their feedback highlighted features they wanted to see, including:

• AI prompts that generate personalized questions based on the user’s profile.
• A preview of group chats.
• The other person’s local time displayed in the chat, rather than just their time zone.
• A way to see shared hobbies and interests.

I revised parts of the design after testing but left group chats for a future rollout, since users considered them nice-to-haves.

This project was incredibly fun for me. As a young adult with many friends across the continental US, I often find it hard to stay connected. Having a large target audience to interview and gather insights from was invaluable. It was highly rewarding to design an app that addresses a very relevant topic for young adults today.