Skype Now
Enabling people to share the same moment, regardless of time and location
Brief
How can we transform Skype’s instant messaging feature to enable more dynamic, natural, and conversational interactions?
Explore diverse asynchronous communication styles and design a service experience that makes these conversations more expressive and engaging.
Collaboration
In collaboration with Skype London, mentored by Design Director Steve Pearce. 10 weeks of Service Design course at Umeå Institute of Design.
Team
Ezgi Sabir, Thuy Nguyen, Martijn van den Broeck.
Introducing "Skype Now"
Step 1 • Choose who you want to be with, record and send away
Choose the person you wish was right there with you in that moment. If they’re on your mind, why not bring them into your world instantly?
With Skype Now, both the front and back cameras capture the moment exactly as it is—letting you be yourself while sharing your surroundings. There’s no need to wait to feel connected; you can start being together in the same moment right away.
Once your moment is captured, it’s sent instantly—no retakes, no edits. It’s all about authenticity—your first, unfiltered shot is what makes it real.
Step 2 • Receive a moment and be together
When you receive a moment and dive into it, you’ll experience the message the other person recorded just for you. You can react, engage, and be with them throughout the message. Your responses are saved as an additional layer on top of the sender’s moment.
Receiving a moment is like an invitation to join the other person in their world, wherever they are. We designed this experience to be personal, dynamic, and natural. The message becomes complete when both of you participate, with each of your contributions saved together, preserving the feeling that you were both there.
Step 3 • Relive an old moment and be encouraged to contact again
At any time, you can revisit those past moments, now part of your personal gallery. Since these moments have already occurred, your response won’t be captured again.
The gallery encourages reconnection by placing the camera view—ready to create a new moment—at the start. Our goal is for the conversation between two people to continue, even after the original moments have passed.
“ We were inspired by all the creative solutions people came up with in order to feel momentarily face-to-face with someone in their lives.”
Prototyping the experience
After brainstorming on paper we challenged our ideas by creating physical prototypes. These helped us to further explore our ideas and to validate them with people. The prototypes mainly focused on how we could apply elements of a synchronous communication experience in an asynchronous one, since we saw the most potential in this area based on the research findings and ideation. Using our prototypes we found a potential by informing the receiver more about the sender. This information can come in many forms, such as the facial expression of the sender, his location when sending or his writing process.
Prototype #1
Capturing The Writing Process
What would happen if we revealed the writing process of the sender? One participant later explained that she could follow the sender’s line of thinking and predicted the next sentences. Exactly in that moment, when both sender and receiver were thinking similarly, they felt strongly connected.
Prototype #2
The Postbox
What if you could know how the person looked like during composing? Letters appearing in the “Postbox” contained both the content and the sender’s facial expression during the composing process. The users were curious to find out in which part of the letter the other person was giving these reactions.
Prototype #3
Rich Text Bubbles
What if you were able to see even more of what was happening on the other side? What they were doing or where they were. This could be either streamed in the background or as an attachment to the text bubble. Tap and hold reveals these recordings.
Exploring the look & feel of the experience
We centered our concept around the invitation metaphor and explored how to bring this style to life through wireframes. We began by designing the key screens, using our scenario and interface specifications as essential guides in shaping the app’s core structure.
Specifying each stage of the user flow
The key screens included steps such as selecting a person, capturing a moment (e.g., creating a video with that person), and receiving a moment—for both the sender and receiver. A crucial design decision was how to categorize these moments. Rather than displaying all moments together, we grouped them under each person. This approach aligned with our concept and research, as we found that people are primarily triggered by specific individuals and want to engage with them within a defined timeframe.
This insight shaped the functionality: recording could only begin after selecting a person.
Another metaphor we incorporated into the wireframes and interaction flow was diving into a moment. When watching or reviewing moments, bubbles representing the sender and receiver move into the moment window, creating an immersive transition. The same flow applies when sending a moment away.
We carefully considered how to visually position our concept within Skype’s ecosystem and in relation to its competitors. Skype’s Qik app felt too trendy, while the Spark app appeared too sleek compared to the core Skype experience.
We decided that Skype Now should still feel like a Skype product but with a more natural and fluid conversation experience. To achieve this, we designed unique visual cues that made asynchronous conversations feel more organic while maintaining Skype’s visual assets for general elements.
Investigating the silent pauses in communication
“How do people handle non-communication?”
Our primary research question emerged in response to the brief on asynchronous communication: How do people handle non-communication?
Over two weeks of ethnographic research, we explored this question through a structured plan that included conducting eight user interviews with follow-up sessions, developing a research framework, and translating our findings into physical prototypes for presentation and feedback from other project teams.
Our participants had unique communication dynamics influenced by family, work, and relationships, with some based in Sweden and others abroad. We employed a mix of research techniques, including contextual inquiry, in-depth user interviews, and journey mapping—visualizing experiences collaboratively with users.
Physicalizing the research
Using our framework as a foundation, we created physical research prototypes that embodied key values of asynchronous communication. During our research presentation, classmates and tutors interacted with these prototypes and provided feedback, helping us further refine our understanding of what makes async communication meaningful.
We designed four research stations, each addressing a different aspect of asynchronous interaction:
Timer: Explored how people perceive time after sending or receiving a message.
Marble Run: Examined the expectations formed during the time gap between messages or conversations.
Light Signal: Investigated how messages are interpreted, focusing on how people make assumptions based on a simple signal like an LED.
The Box: Explored how people create meaning through synchronization with others.
After every interview, we reflected over them on our research board and mapped the unique aspects of each story
The gap, the silent pause, is what defines asynchronous communication. It is the temporal blank space between messages or conversations, occurring when people leave a message because distance prevents face-to-face interaction. Time zone differences and availability constraints further contribute to these pauses, making real-time exchanges impossible.
From our ethnographic research, we discovered a key insight: people tend to embrace these silent pauses when staying connected with loved ones at a distance. Rather than seeing them as interruptions, they become a natural part of maintaining relationships. These pauses allow both parties to focus on their own lives at their own pace. However, the real challenge lies in the exact moment of communication—when one reaches out, but the other’s presence isn’t immediately there.
Our interviews revealed surprising and creative ways people navigate this gap. One person maintained a strict Skype schedule to stay connected with loved ones, while another used letters as a medium to fully express himself to his girlfriend, embracing the slower, more thoughtful nature of written communication.