AMOJI Promptly
iMessage Plug-in
Empowering communities impacted by traumatic injuries to reconnect socially.
Role
User Experience Lead
Co-Founder
Duration
Jan 2024 - Oct 2024
Team
Henry Scherb & Team
Processs
Market Research
Literature Review
Interview
Diary Studies
Product Ideation
Rapid Prototyping
Concept Testing
Wireframing
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Hand-off
OVERVIEW
Amoji is a startup I co-founded with Henry, a friend from my master's program. It grew from deeply personal experiences with our beloved family members: Henry’s brother, Clay, who endured a traumatic spinal cord injury, and my grandfather, who struggled with a stroke and dementia. These experiences motivated us to initiate this project, dedicated to improving the psychosocial well-being of survivors and their communities during difficult times. As the user experience lead, I was responsible for planning and executing research, developing prototypes informed by user interviews, and overseeing the creation of both our first product, promptly, and company website.
(Due to confidentiality agreements, I can only present parts of our research and design. However, please feel free to reach out to me at joanne.chuang@tufts.edu with any questions about other design/research work, and I will do my best to answer them.)
A Sneak Peack to the Final Solution
Here is a sneak peek of our product, Promptly. The following sections of this case study will outline our product innovation journey.
An iMessage plug-in that integrates our product into daily life and is designed to be accessible for users with disabilities.
Optional add-on packet—enhancing excitement for communities—while supporting AMOJI’s growth.
Product Innovation Timeline Overview
This is a snapshot of our product innovation process. We started with a clear mission, but as we moved forward, we had to navigate the challenges and realities of entrepreneurship 💰, while balancing our expertise and experience. Along the way, my research insights led to key pivots that influenced the product direction and business development.
Research Insights (Market Research, Literature Review, and Interview)
In January 2024, we shifted from fitness-oriented products to psychosocial-oriented solutions. After conducting 90 in-depth interviews with survivors, families, friends, therapists, and other stakeholders, we discovered a more devastating issue affecting these communities: mental health. Physical injury was just the tip of the iceberg of their daily challenges.
Product Ideation
Our research provided a solid foundation for product ideation, guiding us through rounds of ideation workshops.
Initial Solution: AMOJI
Fast forward to March 2024, we launched AMOJI—an all-encompassing application designed to strengthen both internal relationships and external mentorship, empowering communities affected by traumatic injuries to build deeper connections and foster resilience throughout their recovery journey. It seemed to be a promising solution…until we tested it with users.
Research Insights (Diary Studies and Concept Testings)
After poor results from user testing on Discord—a platform that initially seemed like the best fit for testing our core features and functionalities—we realized our product needed to seamlessly integrate into users' everyday lives, as revealed through diary studies and engagement performance. They didn’t need another social media-like platform.
After poor results from user testing on Discord—a platform that initially seemed like the best fit for testing our core features—we realized our product needed to seamlessly integrate into users' everyday lives. They didn’t need another social media platform.
(We're going through rounds of name changes—'Qoov' was one of the names.😅)
We then switched to iMessage, the platform participants rely on for daily communication, and saw much better engagement. This validates our learnings on the importance of seamless integration. Below are some screenshots from our testing.
Final Solution: Promptly
As a result, we decided to focus on the social prompting feature in the form of an iMessage plug-in.
A Sneak Peack to the Company Website
In addition to promptly, I also created the company website and worked on upcoming products. While some products cannot be disclosed due to confidentiality, the latter part of this case study will focus on the branding and the company website.
Something Worth Mentioning!
Before I left the company (long story short: as an early-career professional, I was eager to refine my design skills and learn from senior designers before launching my own UX team), we had our very first board of advisor meeting, which included mentors from the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to share our progress. A few mentors mentioned...
and that was exactly what I hoped to achieve!
Deisgn Goal
Typography
Since most of our materials contain text, I began this project by reimagining the typography. The switch from 'Inter' to 'Poppins' ensures legibility while adding a warmer, more playful character. The typeface, Poppins, is designed by Indian Type Foundry.
The alternative ligatures emphasize a pronounced geometric roundness, celebrating the concentration of vowels—one of the defining characteristics of our company name. The consistent stroke weights extend seamlessly into the glyphs, creating a playful, modern aesthetic. Enhanced kerning introduces intimacy and playfulness, ensuring the design feels connected and engaging.
Color Palette
I explored several color options, primarily within the blue and purple spectrum, as these are commonly used in communication brands like iMessage and Facebook. As a new product, we wanted to align with user expectations while also expressing creativity.
I chose the color with hex code #A78BFA, a soft, pastel purple with a subtle bluish tint. This shade was selected for its light, gentle, and airy feel, evoking calm, serenity, and emotional connection. At the same time, it conveys a sense of fun and approachability, ensuring a welcoming and engaging experience for everyone involved in this recovery journey.
Content (Voice and Tone)
Being in this relatively vulnerable space, Henry and I felt that our content needed a voice that conveyed a sense of understanding and shared experience, acknowledging the emotional weight of difficult situations such as health crises.
This line, for example, makes use of clear and impactful word choices, a simple sentence structure, and literary techniques like parallelism and repetition to create a tone of shared experience and empathy. The emotional depth of the message is amplified by including both Henry’s and my personal experiences, making it feel more relatable and powerful.
Website Design
Our first product, Amoji, named after our company, was created to support communities recently experiencing a traumatic injury, while also addressing the business challenge of reaching our target audience by moving the timeline forward. As the primary goal of our landing page, with a clear call-to-action, this is the first thing visitors encounter.
The ripple effect is the heart of our company’s mission—to support the entire community impacted by a traumatic injury. To illustrate this, I visualized it through concentric bubbles, highlighting the interconnectedness and cascading impact of such difficult times.
*Due to time constraints, I decided to use existing graphics from Canva for the profile photos.
The typography, color, and content were designed to achieve this goal. However, the most compelling evidence lies in our concept testing with communities impacted by traumatic injury. Therefore, integrating this data is essential to reinforcing our commitment.