HeartBreak Cafe Design Process

1. HeartbreakCafé Design Process

2. Competitive Analysis
The following is a list of breakup mobile applications and
web applications currently available on the market and the
featured highlights specifications of each app:
 Breakup Medicine: Breakup Medicine is an app that
offers daily exercises and action tips for getting over a
breakup. In the app, users can create posters with their
own photos, which are displayed as backgrounds on
the user interface.
 Breakup App: App sends a breakup text to end a
relationship. Creative but cruel.
 Breakup Text App: Sends a humorous breakup text to
end a relationship.
 The Breakup App: The Breakup App offers breakup
music, advice and stories that make getting over a
relationship easier. They also have a lifestyle app and
community for additional support. This app is remains
development.
 Kill Switch App: Kill Switch seeks to help lessen the
severity of a breakup by removing traces of your ex
from a Facebook profile, including photos, videos, wall
posts and status updates. The app also identifies
photos in which an ex is tagged and transfers them to a
hidden Facebook album. The app does not defriend or
block a user’s ex. This app is targeted towards people
who need to completely avoid reminders of their ex and
those are entering a new relationship and wish to
remove traces of their ex from their Facebook profile.
 RebounDate: Dating after a relationship will never be

3. awkward again, this app claims. Reboundate helps
users find other people who have just gotten out of a
relationship and those who do not mind being the
“rebound date.”
 Should I Break Up With My Boyfriend App: This app
helps users track their emotional patterns over a two-
week period. Users are sent daily reminders to rate how
they feel about their boyfriends. After the user is done
rating their boyfriend over the two week period, they are
sent advice based on the trends of their submission,
informing them whether or not they should break up
with their boyfriend. The app also allows the users to
log their feelings in a diary and it also keeps track of all
of the ratings and it visualizes the weekly ratings so
they are easily accessible and readable.
Though there is many applications that help people
overcome breakups, none are as thorough as Heartbreak
Café. The only app that could potentially be directly
compared to Heartbreak Café is The Breakup App, which is
currently in development. Outside of applications, self-help
books are another set of factors that rival Heartbreak Café.
Instead of seeking help with an application, potential users
may seek counsel in relationship counseling books or even
articles.
Needs Analysis
Dating websites generate over 1.33 billion dollars in
revenue, 53% of the dating service industry, with a project
2.5% increase by the year 2015; these sites represent
millions of users: EHarmony, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid,
Match, to name a few. Yet, no app has been able to
thoroughly capture the market geared toward the heartaches

4. left behind from unsuccessful relationships created by these
sites or formed elsewhere. We ran analysis on tweets about
breakups, used personas and talked with friends who have
recently been through breakups to understand the needs of
the users when getting over a breakup. Moreover, being able
to have someone to talk to, being able to vent frustrations to
a trustworthy source, not neglecting ones self and getting
active were among the things cited as important for getting
over a breakup.
Through Twitter analysis using the hashtag “getting over a
breakup” we were able to gauge how people dealt with
breakups, how they felt about getting over a breakup and
what types of activities or advice people needed to get over
a breakup.
The following are tweet highlights for #getting over a
breakup

5. Here, we see Twitter users identify friends, acceptance and
the ability to talk about their past relationship in an objective
way as apart of the breakup and getting over a breakup
cycle. These screen shots were only some of the data we
mined from Twitter, but we used some of the sentiments to
further cultivate the design of Heartbreak Café.
Design Rationale
With the first iteration of Heartbreak Café, the team wanted
to create a dashboard-like, personal learning environment
(PLE) where the user could create an account and then
receives a personalized recovery plan to heal from their
breakup. The application will give a tailored recovery plan to
fit the needs of the user; one that assist the user via
distraction and support. The app recommends music
playlists, videos and social activities. Below are a lists of
features that have been rolled out in version one of the app.
Main Features
Recovery Plan

6. The recovery plan is a personalized step-by-step process
given to each user. The plan is divided into weeks, with each
week containing themed lessons, videos, music playlists,
detailed set of activities and more. In the example below,
lesson one is the “Art of No Contact” a lesson given to the
user the first week of recovery to promote abstaining from
contact from their ex. When they play the audio, an
automated voice recites the lesson and recalls the
importance of no contact, which is put in place provide time
and space to think about the breakup and to begin the
healing process.
Report Card
This feature tracks how well the user is doing in their
recovery process. It tracks their modes and activities and
highlights the things they are doing well in order to
encourage them along in the process.
Journal
The journal is a digital version of a traditional journal that is
completely private. The user can write their thoughts and

7. feelings and keep a personal log of their emotional health or
any other concerns they need to express and release.
Advice
“Words of wisdom” is the purpose of the advice feature. It is
a populated preset list of advice from experts in the field of
relationship counseling, it provides written advice and
encouragement for the user to promote healthy recovery.
Find A Coach
For individuals who want a real expert to talk to, this feature
allows users to find a relationship coach for a fee.
Heartbreak Café helps to connect the coach to the user and
in return, the company takes a booking fee for making the
connection. The coaches are hired per hour and they can
also provide a guided plan of recovery in supplement to the
tools already inside of Heartbreak Café.
Memory Box
The memory box allows users to lock away all digital aspects
of their love that they may have on their computer: pictures,
videos, movies etc. The user is walked through a process of

8. how to delete all electronic traces of their ex. Digital goods
they man want to recover at sometime in the future can be
locked into the memory box after all other traces from their
computer have been deleted. Once the items are in the
memory box and the user hits submit, it is then locked away
for 6 months and the user is unable to recover the items until
the time has elapsed. If the user desires to recover the
photos and digital goods before time, they must pay a fee for
redemption. Below is a picture of the memory box.
Support Network
The support network is a place where friends of the
heartbroken can be invited to give positive words or
encouragement, write letters, send videos or pictures to help
in the healthy recovery of their friend.

9. Calendar
The calendar feature visual tracks everything the user has
done over the course of the recovery process. It rewards the
user with special badges, if they have completed a given
number of lessons, or if they have been product and active
with the app or even in their social activities. The calendar
also tracks their emotional states and provides a reflective
look at all of the work that has been done toward the
recovery process.

10. Future Work
The next iterations of Heartbreak Café will include: celebrity
advice for overcoming breakups, direct response recovery
output based on emotional input (utilizing sentiment analysis
and emotion mapping to create better recovery plans),
outside links to self help novels and resources (added
monetization strategy), and a definitive end processes for
the recovery plan to funnel the users into another sister
application for dating.
Appendix-Design Log
The idea has evolved from a rebounding app, to a recovery
app. The team used brainstorming strategies, personas and
in class pitches to help nurture the ideas for the app along.
Below is an excerpt from our actual design notes.

11. Proposed Features
- Musicplaylists (I like this one)
- Emotions update: Inform the system how you are feeling to receive customizedcontent (Twidale really likes thisidea)
- You Are Here: timeline, mental loops, hell-week etc( I think this Progress feature is a great thing to have, can track progress during
recovery)
- Daily Exercises: Venting Exercises, Revenge Planning, etc, will he/she come back? Heartsickness, Guilt, biological clock, verbal dagger
defense, moving on (maybe we can have these exercises as apart to the remedy output for the emotional input?)
- Self Improvement: relationshippatterns, self-improvement
- Positive Wallpaper (I think this would be cool, did you have like quotes orsomething in mindfor this? It may be easy to implement)
- Memory whiteboard
- Vault: Time-sealedstorage forromantic memories that will hinderrecovery
- Distractions: relationship-orientedstandupcomedy (I like this distraction element, maybe the app can take on a light tone with this?
From the start it has felt very heavy and I think we needto create a way to turn a sad situation into a very stimulating interaction with the
app. I know that breakups are never phone, but if there is enough distraction, one can gradually overcome anything. “Day by day in every
way i am getting betterand better”, “Time heals” Maybe for the project we could create a mini app geared toward fun and excitement,
things that make people laugh, things that inspire, things that incite creativity, happiness andyouthful vitality)
Mission Statement: Distraction, Recovery, Empowerment, (Mission statement sounds great! Distract, Empower, Recover….just a
reordering and phrasing that just came to mind)
(Maybe we can have an outlet for them to write down theirthoughts and grievances and then they go directly into this module of fun,
excitement, possibilities...what if the worldwas endless type of scenarios……)
We needto find a way to simplify what we are doing for the purpose of this in class project.
(Data Collection) Preliminary Assessment
- Name (First, Last)
- Age
- Children: age(s), living with you
- 5 Closest friends /Amount of friends
- Duration of Relationship
- Suddenness of Downturn
- Suspicions & Theories
- Suddenness of Breakup
Tasks
- Relationships surveys

12. Our efforts include many feature logs and design logs using
Google Docs as well as the in class feedback from
professors and classmates. Though there were many design
ideas and features for the app, the team realized that it
would be good to pick the best 5 or so ideas to really
cultivate a minimal viable product. Of those ideas that we
fleshed out, the recovery plan was the most crucial, for it
would be the central idea of the app and the most critical.
Afterwards, the calendar and support network were decided
as the other two most important features of the application.
The calendar would track the progress of the user and the
support network would provide real physical support from
friends and or a relationship counselor to supplement the
recovery help received from within the application.
Conclusion
The Heartbreak Café will be the first full web application to
assist with breakup recovery. Integrating self-help into a
Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a relatively new
concept. After this first iteration of the prototype, it will be a
great opportunity to analyze the feedback from the early
adopters to highlight the future potential and other use cases
for the application.