Background Context & Problem
Navigating social situations can be overwhelming— especially for individuals with social anxiety, neurodivergent traits, or impairments in social cognition.
Research has shown that "impairments in social cognitive abilities such as affect recognition and pragmatic language may also contribute to challenges in social interactions and friendship making" (Parke et al., 2021).
As we explored this issue further, we uncovered several key gaps in current solutions based on user surveys/interviews and academic research:
Context Awareness
"People with social anxiety don’t uniformly fail to understand social cues; rather, they often misinterpret or overinterpret cues in a negative way. A neutral expression might be viewed as a glare, or a casual comment might be taken as a harsh critique" Kivity, Y., & Huppert, J. D. (2016).
Existing tools typically stop at labeling basic emotions or facial expressions — they rarely address the broader social environment, nor offer real-time, actionable guidance to help navigate more complex situations.
Over-Generalization
Existing solutions (such as virtual conversation agents or socially assistive robots) provide simulated social situations in controlled environments. However, these experiences often fail to translate effectively to real-life, unscripted social interactions, limiting their long-term value.
Demographic
Many existing tools and support systems are primarily designed for children, leaving a critical gap for addressing young adults — a group that is equally in need of resources— yet underrepresented, overlooked, and often stigmatized in this space.
Our Solution
To address these potential gaps in this area, we introduce CueView & CueLog.
Our platform empowers individuals to feel more at ease in social situations by offering real-time social cue interpretation through AR glasses, paired with a reflective, supportive app that transforms post-conversation overthinking into positive growth.
Our Design Process
3 In-Depth User Interviews - including Neurodivergent individuals
Entire Brainstorm Ideation and User Research Synthesis/Analysis (Figma file)
Wireframes and Styles Guide Exploration
Challenges we ran into
As we explored solutions for improving social interaction experiences, a few challenges emerged:
Balancing objectivity with empathy
Translating subtle, nuanced social cues into clear, objective feedback without making interactions feel overly clinical or robotic proved to be difficult. We had to consider how to deliver insights in a way that felt supportive and not judgmental.
Privacy concerns
Designing a system that can capture and interpret real-time social interactions raises ethical questions around data privacy, consent, and safety.
What we learned
Social Anxiety and Neurodivergent Experiences Greatly Vary
The aspects of the social interaction that individuals find difficult can greatly differ. No two people interpret social cues in the same way. Solutions must be flexible and customizable to be truly supportive.
Real-world context matters
Tools designed for simulated environments don’t always prepare users for the unpredictable, real-life everyday conversations. We aimed for our design that not only offered real-time guidance, but also prioritized context-awareness, adaptability, and subtlety.
Reflection is just as important as real-time support
Many people often spend a lot of time overthinking after a conversation than they do in the moment. Pairing live guidance with post-conversation reflection tools can be a powerful combination for emotional support and learning.
Built With
- figma
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