Stay close, wherever life takes you—friendship made effortless.
It makes discovering new adventures easy and accessible, all while keeping your spending in check and promoting mindful budgeting.
Tethered
MY ROLE
User Researcher
UX Designer
UI Designer
TOOLING
Figma
Figjam
Adobe Creative Suite
DELIVERABLES
User Research
Prototyping
High Fidelity Designs
As a three-person design team, we set out to solve a familiar problem: in today’s busy, always-on world, even our closest friendships can fray under the pressure of distance, packed schedules, and endless digital noise.
Fragmented apps and overcrowded calendars turn staying in touch into a chore. Through usability tests and interviews, we discovered that jumping between platforms for simple catch-ups leads to missed check-ins, awkward pauses, and friendships slowly drifting apart—leaving people feeling disconnected, even when they genuinely want to reach out.
Tethered creates a collaborative space for friends, bringing everyone together in one cozy hub where catching up feels natural. Instead of jumping between apps, you can dive into boards to sketch out plans, share quick photos and emojis, or brainstorm ideas in real time.
If someone’s been quiet, a gentle nudge reminds everyone to say hello, and a fun streak system celebrates those small, consistent check-ins that keep friendships alive. By focusing on these core elements and wrapping them in a warm, simple interface, Tethered turns staying close into something you actually look forward to every day.
Journey
After conducting seven user interviews and creating our affinity diagrams—our main takeaways:
“It can become a chore, memes and sharing content helps with making interactions feel more personalized.”
-Interviewee 2
“Too busy to keep up with multiple platforms.”
-Interviewee 1
“Reciprocity and mutual involvement is what keeps consistency with my friends.”
-Interviewee 3
Following the interviews, the results were analyzed and organized into six distinct categories, forming an affinity diagram that subsequently informed the empathy map.
To ground our ideas, our user persona helped build a base and served as a design generator for our definition and ideation process.
Meet Tony.
After three iterations of our user flows, we narrowed the scope to perfect how users navigate the app, giving us a crystal-clear view of our design.
The flow reflects exactly how someone would interact with their boards.
Insights to Interface
Mobile
393 px
Mid Fidelity Frames
Style Guide
Logo Creation
tethered
Typograhpy & Colors
Light
Regular
Medium
Söhne
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Aa
Light
Regular
Tethered creates a collaborative space for friends, bringing everyone together in one cozy hub where catching up feels natural. Instead of jumping between apps, you can dive into boards to sketch out plans, share quick photos and emojis, or brainstorm ideas in real time.
Post-Design
Team work = dream work!
Building Tethered as a small team really proved that two (or three!) heads are better than one. I loved how our collaborative sessions—jamming on streak reminders, whiteboard flows, and chat–board handoffs—sparked ideas I never would’ve had solo.
Tethered proved that great features come from real teamwork, honest feedback, and a shared vision.
Future steps
Rewards System: Introduce Design badge and them a feature to incentivize user engagement and foster loyalty through points or perks.
Live Map with Trends and Reviews: Implement synchronized streaming so friends can tune in to shows and movies together without ever leaving Tethered.
Collaborative Travel Planning: Maintain continuous user testing on each new feature to spot pain points fast and iterate in the next sprint.