Mesh App: CreateSc Designathon

A professional project collaboration platform. By students, for students.

TOOLS

Adobe Xd, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Miro

METHODS + SKILLS

User Research (In-person Interviews), Secondary Research, Journey-Mapping, Wire-framing, Prototyping, Visual Design, UI/UX Design

DURATION

36-hour design-a-thon

TEAM

Labiba Amyeen, Angela Lee, Patrick Zhu, Imran Tallman

ROLE

Researcher, Interaction Designer

overview

The purpose of this app is to connect students with other student collaborators for personal projects + professional development purposes. The primary feature of this app allows students to a) find open projects to collaborate, and b) create their own projects + find teammates for said projects.

project outline

 
  1. research

Understanding the needs of the potential user and surveying the current product space for similar products.

 

2. synthesize

Consolidating insights from research and analyzing pain points and user features to tackle in ideation

 
 

3. ideate

Generating ideas for prototyping, brand identity and more

 
 
 

4. prototype

Bringing ideas to lifes from wireframes to high fidelity mock-ups

THE ASK

Create a mobile app that allows like-minded college students to connect and collaborate on personal projects. Provide a way for students to share their portfolios, experiences, and ideas with one another.

THE ASK

evaluation criteria

Does the solution address the target audience and their needs?

  • Does the prototype solve the solution in an innovative way?

  • Is the user experience and interface intuitive?

  • Is the visual design used in a thoughtful and meaningful way?

RESEARCH

methodology

 

primary research

47 user surveys + 4 phone/video interviews

secondary research

competitive analysis  [LinkedIn, Jumpstart, Dribbble, 99Designs]

 

user research insights

PRODUCT IDEATION

What would users like to see more of from collaboration platforms?

  • Leverage existing platforms

  • Streamline Communication (between users)

  • Simple, organized UX/UI

  • Onboarding

  • Personalized Recommendations (for projects + collaborators)

  • Reliability (being able to verify dependability of potential collaborators)

PAIN POINTS

What do users find frustrating about current collaboration platforms?

  • Security - zoom bombing, data privacy

  • Lack of organization - unintuitive UX, hard to find things

  • Communication - response times, time zones

  • Branding/Impression - Apps either seem too professional (not student friendly) or lack solid UI/branding

 

competitive analysis insights

What features make current products on the market succeed?

  • Community Building - enable and encourage sharing or projects and profiles, allow direct messaging between users

  • Content Storage - single page with ALL saved/applied to projects, allow users to save projects in categories

  • Organization Structures - sort by tags or channels, every feature should have a clear purpose, app-wide UI consistency

  • Human Aspect - values, who exactly you’re looking for, how much time you have to contribute, personalized feeds

  • Personalization - first-time users take a quiz to gage interests/curate discovery or home page, utilize a Tinder-like swipe feature to aid content customization

SYNTHESIS

customer personas

 

Indecisive Inquisitor

“I dunno, what do you think?”

I am somewhat unaware of my own limitations when it comes to skills and commitment.

I aim to find cool (whatever that means right now) new things to do, test the waters before actively committing, and build my network/skills for recruiting

I don’t know where to find things to do and can’t think of any project ideas on my own.

Cheerful Collaborator

“Looking for my next big adventure!”

I am open-minded and excited to start working, and I am self-aware of my abilities and limitations.

I aim to find interesting work to build my skills. I have a rough idea of what I want but am open to new ideas.

I don’t want to be responsible for ideating a new project or leading it, but I will willfully follow through on provided instructions.

Purposeful PM

“I’m in it to win it!”

I am goal-oriented and persistently looking for committed, skilled people to fill roles in my project.

I aim to find dependable project members, and hope to gain experience as a PM for work in industry.

I don’t want to be responsible for ideating a new project or leading it, but I will willfully follow through on provided instructions.

 

brainwriting + HMWs

After consolidating our research insights, we all brainstormed HMWs based on the insights

We grouped them into 4 overarching categories and created one HMW per category. 

  1. Discovery

  2. Internal Features FOR User

  3. External Features OF User

  4. Community/Platform Culture

Using these categories, we generated our final HMW...

 How might we make discovering and interacting with people and projects interesting, simple, and intuitive?

IDEATION

Using our HMW and research insights, we created a feature map on Miro. The pink sticky notes indicate the higher level features. The yellow sticky notes indicate the details. The blue, green, and purple sticky notes were direct quotes/insights from our research that correspond with certain features.

feature mapping

 

After creating the feature map, we converted it to a user flow. The user-flow insured that the features we ideated flowed together intuitively. The user flow also helped us split up the work into different segments so different people could create lo-fi mock-ups of different segments of the app.

user flow

PROTOTYPE

visual identity

BRAND IDENTITY + LOGO

With our brand, we aimed to…

  1. Be student-friendly

  2. Seem playful, yet professional

  3. Set the tone for community-building

The name Mesh itself embodies the community-based spirit we wanted our app to encapsulate.

 

interaction design

KEY FEATURES: ONBOARDING

A simple + easy to understand onboarding is key to app retention.

Feature Highlights:

  • Sign Up Quiz - aids with personalized suggestions for projects + collaborations

  • Profile Creation - leverages other platforms, in-app uploads, quick and easy to navigate

 

KEY FEATURES: PROJECTS APPLICATION

One of the unique features of this app is the ability to apply for projects on the app. 

Feature Highlights:

  • Message PM directly- helps users connect with other users in a efficient + meaningful way

  • Project Details - helps reduce the cognitive load on user of having to research project details + centralizes the information

 

KEY FEATURES: SEARCH FILTERS

The search feature we designed is meant to tackle issues with organization + navigation users reported.

Feature Highlights:

  • Segmentation - is segmented by projects and people to aid both those seeking teammates and those searching for work opportunities

  • Varied Filters - is able to sort by various needs the user may have and provides another level of personalization.

 

Check out the full Adobe Xd prototype here!

concluding sentiments

Struggles

What things went wrong? 

  • Time Management - My team spent a lot of time researching which is normally a good thing: however, in the designathon setting, it definitely hindered our final product. There were a lot of micro-interactions and details that were overlooked. Additionally, we could not user-test

  • Uneven Work Distribution - This project was particularly difficult because no one on my team had worked with one another. I would’ve definitely liked to be more involved in parts of the research + more get assistance on building out the UI of most of the ap

Future Iterations

What are things I would’ve like to add/do differently?

  • User Testing - With more time, I’d love to have people test the app. Without user-testing it’s really hard to discover the little kinks and issues slip by you while designing.

  • Intentional Microinteractions - Again, the primary constraint for this project was definitely timing. With more time, I would’ve loved to focus on honing on specific microinteractions and perfecting the details of the UI

  • Moonshot Features - Some other features I would’ve liked to implement are event/calendar integrations, dark mode, and mentor-mentee programs