Peekaboo
Connected Objects & EMOTIONAL WELLBEING
Made to be shared. Peekaboo is not a private inbox. Friends and family all send into the same growing collection, so every peek adds to a shared story the whole group builds together.
Context
CMU · Spring 2025
Timeline
8 Weeks
Role
Research + Design
Focus Areas
User Research, Concept Development, Industrial Design, App UI Design, Rapid Prototyping, 3D Printing
Tools
SolidWorks · KeyShot · 3D Printing · Rapid Prototyping · Interviews · Figma · Illustrator
The Problem
People move away for education, work, and life, creating distance between family, friends, and loved ones. Communication becomes planned instead of spontaneous, and emotional connection slowly competes with schedules, productivity, and time differences.
As an international student, I noticed how quickly relationships shift once distance becomes part of everyday life. I became interested in the small rituals people create to hold onto closeness. Not grand gestures, but quiet systems that help people feel remembered.
How might we help people feel close, even when they are far apart?
Primary Research: International students and loneliness
I conducted interviews with international students ranging from freshmen to graduate-level students to better understand how distance, changing routines, and time zones affect their relationships and sense of connection. These were the key insights that emerged from the interviews:
Generative Research: How do different people navigate similar situations?
I created a generative research exercise to understand what helps people feel grounded, how distance shapes relationships, and the emotional role of objects, routines, and communication. Participants also mapped how they balance people versus objects, physical versus digital actions, and practicality versus emotional meaning.
Initial Sketches & Prototype Development
Early sketches explored how small objects and spaces could bridge distance—creating quiet moments that remind people far away that they're still cared for and missed, even amid the demands of daily life.
Inspired by antique fax machines. Playful buttons, bold colors, and tactile materials turn shared memories into visual albums to exchange and compare when you meet.
App Design
Capture a moment, add a note, and send it as a “peek” to someone you care about. With a limited number each week, the app encourages thoughtful, consistent connection.
Always within reach.
Across distances, across time. Whether you’re coming home or just waking up, find the
moments they saved for you, the ones they shared when you crossed their mind.
Print your Peeks. Keep them close.
Hold onto what reminds you of them, and share what feels worth sending back. Let the moments you capture become something more personal, something that quietly belongs to both of you.
Manual on purpose.
Load the paper. Turn the dial. Press once. Nothing happens faster than you decide it should, and the wait while it prints is the part where you think about who sent it.
Build an album of moments that remind your loved ones of you
and compare them when you finally meet.
Reflection
Peekaboo started somewhere small. Living far from home, I noticed that the messages that made me feel closest were never the important ones. They were a blurry photo of the dog, someone's dinner, a thing they saw and thought of me. Designing it taught me that closeness is easier to make room for than to manufacture. Every feature I added to make people share more turned the object into another thing to keep up with. The version that worked asked for less. A few peeks a week, printed, kept.
The form mattered more than I expected. Once the device felt like an old fax machine instead of a screen, waiting for something to print stopped being a delay and became part of the pleasure. People wanted to touch it. I still think about the last thing I heard in my interviews, which is that people don't want more contact. They want proof they were thought of.