Don't Make a Wish

Objective

To create a tool that helps people — especially young adults — start important conversations and gain insights through dialogue. The app is based on the idea that while we often look for quick answers or external solutions, the most valuable insights usually come from conversations with others.

Process

The project started with an exploration of how to encourage meaningful conversations in a generation that often looks for instant answers through apps and the internet. The solution was to design an experience that uses expectation breaking: the onboarding presents an interactive narrative that promises easy answers, but gradually reveals that the real answers are not in the app — they exist in real-life conversations. After this reflection, the app introduces its core feature: generating a conversation plan. Users answer a short form about the problem they are facing and the person they intend to talk to. Based on this information, the app generates structured suggestions on how to start the conversation, keep it flowing, and extract valuable insights from it. Development began with a simple functional prototype used to validate the experience flow and identify usability gaps. During a prototype fair, feedback showed that the app’s intention was not immediately clear to users. The onboarding was then refined to provide more context and improve the transition between the narrative experience and the practical tool. Technically, the app was built using SwiftUI and SwiftData for state management and local persistence. To make conversation suggestions more relevant, Apple’s Natural Language Framework was integrated to analyze the tone of the conversation the user wants to have, allowing the app to generate suggestions that better match the intended communication style. The final result is a simple yet reflective tool that combines narrative design, interaction design, and natural language processing to encourage more intentional and productive conversations.