Backstage
Backstage is an offline social support app designed for people with social anxiety. It aims to help users gradually build confidence in face-to-face social interaction through social guidance, low-pressure activity and emotional feedback mechanisms.
Current problem
Social anxiety and online isolation
Primary research
Surveys & Interviews
In my recent primary research, I conducted a survey with 55 participants and followed up with several in-depth interviews to better understand people’s perspectives on online and offline social interaction. The results revealed some clear patterns. About 74% of respondents said that online communication rarely led to meaningful friendships in real life, highlighting a general skepticism toward digital interactions as a foundation for emotional connection. Many also noted that relying too much on online socializing often increased their feelings of loneliness, rather than reducing it.
Additionally, 60.71% agreed that technology has a notable impact on emotional relationships, although they also emphasized that this effect depends heavily on how individuals use it. What stood out more was that 35.71% of respondents felt that face-to-face communication had decreased due to the rising influence of digital platforms—a sign of growing digital dependence.
Interview feedback provided further insights. One 27-year-old woman working in education shared her perspective by saying she only considers people she meets in person as true “friends.” In contrast, she referred to online contacts simply as “digital neighbors.” Her view emphasized the importance of real-life interactions in forming authentic and lasting friendships, suggesting that relationships formed purely online may lack the emotional depth that comes from physical presence.
Taken together, these findings highlight the need for a more supportive kind of social platform—one that gently encourages people to reconnect offline and fills the emotional gaps that many current applications fail to address.
Limitations of existing social platforms
Many popular social platforms today try to connect online interaction with real-life relationships, but most still show clear limitations—especially for users dealing with social anxiety.
Take Partiful as an example. It focuses on user-initiated, user-hosted events and assumes that participants will actively organize or join social activities. While this works for outgoing users, it can be overwhelming for those who struggle with making the first move or managing unfamiliar social situations on their own. Similarly, Meetup tends to feature large-scale events, often with more than 100 attendees. For people with social anxiety, such big, impersonal gatherings can feel intimidating rather than welcoming. They tend to increase anxiety instead of easing it.
Eatwith is another platform that connects people through shared dining experiences. Although it offers a relaxed setting, the clear separation between “host” and “guest” can sometimes block authentic emotional connection. The transactional feel of these activities makes it difficult to build equal, meaningful friendships naturally.
Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble also have their limitations. They are usually focused on physical looks and quick interactions. This often makes it more difficult to create deeper emotional bonds,especially for social anxiety groups.
All of these examples show a problem: All these platforms put too much pressure on users to take initiative, but ignore the emotional needs of individuals, or focus too much on superficial interactions. As a result, people with social anxiety are often left without a truly supportive or suitable space for developing genuine relationships.
Seeing this gap, I decided to conduct primary research to better understand what socially anxious users actually experience and need.
Theoretical Background
Dramaturgy
Exposure Therapy
User-Centered Design Process
User Personas
User test 1
Overview
This project aims to design an activity-based offline social app that connects users through platform-organized events rather than mutual selection.
The goal is to help users meet naturally in real-world settings and reduce social anxiety through guided participation.
Offline socializing is based on platform-organized activities.
Users cannot choose participants directly; all interactions happen naturally through events.
Users can filter activities by distance, time, or type.
The platform provides registration, management, and reminders to simplify preparation.
Real-world participation helps users gradually reduce social anxiety.
User testing focuses on how participants select and experience events within this structure.
User flow
Lo-fi
Feedback
During the first round of user testing for Backstage, participants noted that the app felt quite similar to other existing social platforms. They mentioned that its concept and functions lacked distinctive features, making it hard to identify what set it apart or gave it a competitive advantage in the market.
In order to respond to the feedback, the future iteration of Backstage will aim at creating a more distinct and emotionally centered direction. Rather than copying other social models, the design will prioritize feelings and empathy — assisting customers in expressing vulnerability, experience comfort, and connect due to common experiences. The aim is identifying and addressing actual points of emotional hurt among socially anxious people, such as fear of rejection, inability to initiate conversations, and pressure in putting up social facades. By designing at points of emotional truth, Backstage can become a more legitimate and people-oriented social experience.
User test 2
Overview
This prototype was a low-fidelity website wireframe built in Figma and Framer, aiming to simulate the basic flow and interaction logic of a social app that promotes offline connections. It focused on four main screens:
Homepage
Event choose
backstage
login & signup page
The goal was to see if users could figure out how to use the app and understand the content without any instructions.
User flow
