Role: UX Designer (visual value proposition, wireframes, prototype), User Researcher
Size of team: 5 people
Length of project: 8 weeks
Tools used: Figma, Google apps (Docs, Sheets, Forms)
Class: ITP 310 Designing for User Experience
Background
For my class, Designing for User Experience, I collaborated with four other team members to go through the design process from ideating an original app idea for a target audience, testing our ideas with users, creating the wireframes and a working prototype, and pitching our app to the class. I joined the team after one of my team members pitched the app concept.
The Problem: Students Don't Know Where to Find Projects and People
Many students in creative fields need to have a portfolio to apply for jobs, internships, or even clubs. To build their portfolio, they try to work on student-led projects in their field of interest. They encounter two problems:
1. Students have difficulty finding projects to build their portfolio
2. Students want to start projects but may not know who has the skills they need
Our Solution: A Platform for Connecting Students With Projects and Peers
Our solution was to create the app DICE: a platform for college students to find and post projects to work on with their peers.
There are two main types of users:
1. Students looking for projects
2. Students looking for peers to join a project.
Since there is higher competition in the tech industry with many similar apps, we decided to target students in creative fields like art, film, drama, etc.
User Personas: The Creative Skills and the Creative Mind
To better understand our users, we created two user personas: Alvin, who wants to work on projects that fit his skills and interests, and Jizelle, who wants to find people with the skills she needs to create her own business.
Core Features
Based on our user personas, we created user stories to identify features that our app would include to satisfy our users' needs to match students with student-run creative projects. Users can discover projects, connect with people with certain skills, post projects, and message other students about potential opportunities to work together.
Low-fidelity Wireframes and User Research
My team and I designed low-fidelity wireframes showing our core features and surveyed 35 users on Qualtrics to learn their impressions. Based on our user feedback, we created high-fidelity wireframes that added real examples of project descriptions and tags.
High-fidelity Wireframes
Final Wireframes
Here are the full wireframes. It includes the addition of more features:
- Creating and view others’ profiles centered around their projects and skills
- “I’m interested” button
- Interested and suggested peers
Prototype
Here is the prototype of the DICE app. When conducting a systems usability test with this prototype, the users generally found it easy to use without much difficulty. At the end of the semester, my team and I pitched our app to the class, highlighting the problem that DICE solves, our target audience, the main features of the app, and how a user would use DICE to find a project to work on and people to collaborate with.
Final Thoughts
I learned three main skills through this project:
1. How to pitch a product in a way that generates intense interest from the audience and clearly communicates its value
2. How to conduct user testing to validate ideas and iterate on top of that
3. How to be proactive in sharing design ideas and bring up potential issues early on
Want to elevate your UX design?
Email me at ljlamadr@usc.edu let's explore how I can help achieve your goals.
