LAUNCHIT
Product Design | Web Application | Group Project
Overview
LaunchIt is a website dedicated to integrate available resources to connect students with extracurricular opportunities and peers with similar interests. This platform aims at streamlining the process of finding opportunities and recruiting teammates as well as breaking the walls between majors and fields. Engineering students who have brilliant ideas for projects now can recruit teammates with a business backgrounds. In addition, professors and leaders from organizations can also utilize this platform to recruit members.
My Role
UI/UX Designer / Researcher
Duration
12 Months
Team Project
2 UI/UX Designer
1 Product Manager
11 Software Engineers
Tools
Adobe XD
Excel
Key Contribution
Collaborated with designer, developers and PM to design and ship the redesign of LaunchIt.
Prioritized product requirements and design features with product manager for building the minimum viable product in roadmap.
Conducted user research through in-depth interviews and surveys to understand users’ specific pain points, carried out usability testing to refine high-fidelity prototypes.
PROJECT AT A GLANCE
Problem
Students are struggling to search and explore extracurricular opportunities and projects as postings and information is scattered in different channels and it's not transparent enough.
Outcome
A centralized platform with sufficient visibility, clear information hierarchy and effective communication for students to explore opportunities and find teammates with similar interests.
Project Highlights
Intuitive Onboarding Experience
Learn about the highlight features for both students and talent recruiters in the quick onboarding tutorial.
Explore Variety of Extracurricular Opportunities With Ease
Explore and learn opportunities and projects with specific requirements and details in one place by browsing and search through posts.
Show Interest and Apply For Opportunity With a Few Clicks
Without sending applications through emails or other platforms, students can apply for interested position in the same platform with simple clicks.
Track Applications and View Real-time Status
Students can keep track of their applications, receive updates and view current status in real time.
So what's the problem we're solving...
From our observations and initial contextual inquiries, we found that many extracurricular opportunities are exposed to students via email and related websites and students are struggling to find these opportunities, as they are scattered in different platforms and channels.
INITIAL HYPOTHESIS
There is no efficient platform in place with sufficient visibility, clear information hierarchy and effective communication for students to explore opportunities and find teammates with similar interests.
USER RESEARCH
Identifying User Pain Points...
The purpose of the primary research is to understand students' experiences in finding extracurricular opportunities and uncover pain points and specific challenges they're facing.
16 Online Survey
4 In-depth Interviews
Online Survey
There are total 16 college students from different backgrounds and majors participated in the survey and answered questions about their experiences in searching and joining extracurricular opportunities.
In-depth Interview
In order to gain a qualitative perspective on their experience, we have conducted 4 in-depth interviews to identify challenges and pain points they are encountering.
Current User Journey Map
Consolidating the research data into this user journey map helps us to better emphasize with users and identify potential opportunity gaps through different stages. It also helps me to translate the pain points into design ideas.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
HOW MIGHT WE
improve students' experiences of searching and applying for extracurricular opportunities?
A centralized platform that provides streamlined process for students to participate or initiate extracurricular projects.
IDEATION
Brainstorming solutions...
Envisioning User Flow
Mapping out the user flow based on our initial design ideas help us brainstorm on the essential functionalities and break down the functions into individual step.
Low-fidelity Prototypes
ITERATION
Collecting feedback by testing...
We have conducted usability testing on 6 college students from different academic backgrounds. Their feedback and responses help us further refine our high-fidelity prototypes.
More intuitive navigation for users
We combined two navigation bars (top & left bar) into one to make it easier for users to navigate with less distraction. We have tested 5 different versions with users and decided on the final navigation bar, using “My Activities” as the main flow.
Improved information hierarchy for post details
We categorized information and built information hierarchy to display lengthy texts into clear structure, based upon our feedback from users stating that it’s difficult to find specific requirements of each position.
More comprehensive display of profiles
We changed the profile page layout and added fields for users to input more relevant information (intro, github, portfolio...) to help project recruiters to learn about users.
Streamlined experience of managing applications
To alleviate users’ frustration in managing and keeping track of their application status and recruitment, we added a couple new features, including “Manage Applicants” and “Applied”.
MOBILE VIEW
Making the design responsive
To guarantee seamless user experience across all platforms, I crafted a responsive version of the design for mobile view, prioritizing content organization for enhanced clarity and ease of scanning.
STYLE GUIDE
Ensuring consistency across design
Text Style
Button
Color Palette
Video Demonstration
Reflecting back...
Collaborating with PM & Engineers
Frequent communication with product manager and receiving feedback from development team is critical to understand the business goal and team progress. In addition, documenting design changes in spec sheets and ranking them into different priority with product managers help facilitate the development process and allow us to deliver MVP on time.
Building design consistency
Establishing a systematic design library that standardize the UI components and modules helped increase efficiency, visual consistency and reduce repetitive work for development teams