BIJOUX CASE STUDY

A digital locket that symbolizes your love and enables image sharing, ensuring you carry a tangible reminder of your loved one.

UCSD Startup Studio Catalyst Funding Winner

Project Type

Class Project



Project Role

Co-Project Manager

Duration

10 weeks



Teammates

Bella Hardy
Karina Kirsch
Sina Radi
Kean Sebastian

Overview

Project Context

Long distance relationships are hard enough as it is, but the limitations on the kinds of communication are frustrating for many. Calling, texting, and Facetime are all methods of long-distance communication, but they all lack the ability to capture the depth and sincerity in relationships. Anyone can send a text message or make a video call and thus lacks genuine connection and personal touch.

Our mission was to create a product that offers personalization and holds sentimental value for anyone who wants to stay connected to their loved ones no matter the distance.
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User Research

Discovering the Problem-Solution Landscape

In order to be able to come up with a novel startup idea that could become profitable, we needed to identify a niche that our product would hope to fill. To begin, our group focused on fast fashion jewelry, gearing our research towards anyone who wears jewelry. We launched a survey that gathered data regarding habits and use of jewelry to help us identify any pain points or features that could be created.

Creating and Validating User Scenarios

From our survey results, we focused on 6 ideas to storyboard, including incorporating safety, customizability, and new functionality to jewelry. We conducted user interviews to get an idea of which idea was the most appealing to our target audience, and the most popular was the digital locket that allowed users to communicate over long distances.

Launching Probes

In this stage of our project, we focused on our branding through launching a web probe and conducting AB testing to see which landing page would attract the most interest. From our test, we found that there was a 30% increase in engagement in Web Probe A and proceeded with that version to create our Instagram and Google ads.

Web Probe A

Web Probe B


MVP

For our minimum viable product (MVP), we created both what the app would look like and simulated what the actual digital locket would look like through an Apple Watch attached to a chain, allowing users to wear it as a necklace.

Some features we included were:
  • The ability for users to send and receive images to the locket
  • A built in image gallery so user can customize their locket face easily
  • Biometric sensors to allow for mood sensing


Following this, we conducted 2 user tests to assess desirability of our proposed mode of connection for situations when people are apart from their loved ones. We also sought insights to enhance locket experience.

The new ideas generated included:
  • Considerations for determining which buttons will be physical and which will be on the locket face
  • Function to schedule send images

Pitching Innovation

Our final step was considering the business aspect of our startup. We drafted a 6-month budget that accounted for the development of our physical product, all initial startup costs, monthly revenue, and monthly expenses to map out how we would make money. We also created a Kickstarter campaign to be able to allow us to have enough cash on hand to start our company.



We finalized our design for the app and locket with the feedback we received from our user tests and refined our product to match our style guide.
In the final presentation of our project, we competed against 11 other teams and won the catalyst funding for our idea.


Reflection

This project was an interesting experience because it allowed me and my team to think not only about the design aspect of our idea, but also the business aspect and the viability of our product in the market. We were given the opportunity to explore what it would be like to start our own company and the types of considerations we would need to engage with.

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