In an era in which devices are often blamed for disconnecting us from family, friends and partners, our ‘Send your heart’ app aims to have the opposite effect by bringing people together with an ingenious and heartfelt use of modern technology. We wanted to demonstrate that technology could be used to enhance the emotional side of romance and not just the functional.

So, our idea was to create an app that allowed users to show their love in a unique way: by sending their heartbeat, set to a romantic score, to a loved one.

Using the light from their phone’s flash, the app records the user’s heartbeat by detecting the unique colour changes of the skin on their finger. To reflect this technology, the mobile UI was designed by hand, amorously illustrated with pen and paper like a classic love letter.

We built a Valentine’s Day app that went live on the 11th February for iOS, which allowed users to send a recording of their actual heartbeat, set to a romantic score, as a message to their loved one. It’s simple to use: just place a finger over the phone’s camera flash when prompted and the user’s pulse is detected, measuring their heartbeat accordingly. The sound of the heartbeat is then set to a romantic score, which can be sent as a message to a loved one via text, WhatsApp or other messaging services. The recipient is then able to listen to the heartbeat via a dedicated link.

As a first in this context, the app showed how technology can be used to help enhance romance, allowing ASDA to demonstrate it cares about the true meaning of Valentine’s Day by delivering something standout and special.

iOS downloads - 20.6K

Android downloads - 14k

Total downloads – 34.6K

61K messages in 72 hours (65,558 messages sent in total) (https://sendyourheart.asda.com/total)

Page Views: 83,000

Unique Users: 44,000

Really good engagement rate of 23% for video views and 13% for tweets

Cost per download from Google UAC was £2.54 (expectation was £4 - £5 CPD)

Session Duration: 1m27s

94% of traffic came from mobile

3% from tablet

3% from desktop

50% of traffic came from iPhones