SIGHTWISE
Build a more compact online community that helps every mentor and mentee nurture
#connectblue
Overview
Role
Prompt
User Experience and Interaction Designer
Team
Individual Project
Your school wants to strengthen the community by encouraging experienced students to connect with new students and help them adjust to campus life. Design an experience that allows mentors and mentees to discover each other. Consider the needs of both mentors and mentees, including how someone may become a mentor and how to connect mentors to mentees.
Goal
Client
Google Design Challenge
Establish a platform that all University of Michigan students and alumni can approach in order to have access to leadership, education and opportunities that empower and prepare them to create positive change on their campus and in their community.
Tools
Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe XD, Customer interviews, Prototype testing
Duration
February 2019 (03/02/2020- 10/02/2020)
Solution
SightWISE is an application that helps connect mentees with mentors using recommendations, customization, and preference filters. Getting to know and connect with someone outside your social circle can be challenging. The application comes with various features to help combat initial hiccups for mentees and in turn provide legit incentives for all the mentors devoting their time.
The story of every new student on campus
Research Process
DAY 1
Existing Scenario
Background research about both online and offline competitors
DAY 2
Interview
Conducted an online survey along with 6 user interviews and in order to form various possible solutions to the problem created a major storyboard
DAY 3
Persona
Primary, secondary and anti- personas were developed
DAY 4
Ideation
User flow diagrams along with a detailed road map produced
DAY 5
Wireframing
Functionality
Several sketch mockups along with wireframes developed
Important functions and needs were prioritized
DAY 6
User Testing
A low fidelity prototype was produced for user testing after consolidating all the functional needs
DAY 7
High Fidelity
A high fidelity prototype was developed to solve the problem statement
How is the problem being addressed currently?
What did I learn from online resource analysis?
I started my research with some brainstorming. I performed a competitor analysis to see how other products were tackling this issue.
MAJOR STRENGTHS
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Strong filter channels
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In-app chat facility
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Swiping and accepting invites
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User friendly and legible
MAJOR WEAKNESSES
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Awkward initial digital conversations
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Lack of a sense of physical connection
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No video call facility
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No inclusion of maps
What did I learn from offline resources on-campus and off-campus
For networking and getting to know more people who can guide you to and through processes there are several offline networking events such as meetups, literary events, induction programs and round table conferences. For our university the Alumni has formed a special group and contact all the new students via that group.
MAJOR STRENGTHS
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Build large network quickly
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Sense of isolation and awkwardness is being broken
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Real interactions create a more favorable environment
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Body language, facial expressions, help express
MAJOR WEAKNESSES
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Demographic inquiry is greater
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Taxing for few people
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Intimidated during the first interactions
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Not comfortable sharing their personal contact details
Survey & Interviews
Before starting my design I wanted to reach out to my potential users in order to get to the depth of their painpoints I wanted to understand what are they looking for and how are they getting things solved in the current scenario. I conducted a survey before so that I could get a summary of the different types of audience and further selected my users for interview based on that. Iconducted a survey including 30 people and further I interviewed 6 participants. 3 of them were new students and the probable mentees and the other 3 were the probable mentors. I tried and kept the diversity as much as possible.
PROBABLE MENTEES
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Undergraduate first year
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Graduate first year
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Transfer student from a bridge program
PROBABLE MENTORS
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Alumni
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Second year graduate student
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Final year under graduate student
Identifying needs and painpoints
MENTOR NEEDS
MENTEE NEEDS
Learn from the process
Gain respect
Help the students in need
Money
Help the community develop
Provide testimonials
Learn mentoring
Keep track of all mentees
Career guidance
Academic choices
Communities for international students
Relationship advice
Transition feedback
Financial guidance
Social interaction
Smooth transfer transition
MENTOR PAINPOINTS
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A lot of students come up with the same questions
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Receive calls before booking or fixing a time
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No incentives involved
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Most students don’t know what they are asking (No clarity)
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Mentees are hesitant for a phone call or an in person meeting
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Different level of experience
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Screening the needy is difficult
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It is hard to find solutions for every question
MENTEE PAINPOINTS
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Difficult to formulate all problems
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Not able to see a calendar to book an appointment
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Hesitant to approach
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Feel pressurized to attend college as are the first to attend college from their household
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Low tech experience
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Language barrier (international students)
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Might not click with the first mentor they talk to
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Not equipped with the names of streets and it is hard to find ways
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Finding a roommate
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Choosing the correct major
Defining the problem and the constraints
WHAT
Create a mobile application that will be only available to the students of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor to maintain safety and privacy.
WHO
The mobile application will target three student categories, the mentees, freshman, and the experienced, final year students and alumni.
HOW
Enable willing mentors to connect and guide mentees. The application will utilize the personal preferences and background of individuals to assist the mentors and the mentees to discover each other. Once they connect, they will be able to use the application to interact with each other.
What kind of personas did I make?
After consolidating all of the research and insights, I was able to pinpoint the target audiences. With this in mind, I generated user scenarios of the three most eligible audiences, the freshman, senior students and the alumni.
Why do I want to create a mobile application?
I wanted to create a diverse platform which was not merely a group (Facebook group) or a meeting place (Common Dorms). The main goal is to provide various information channels to the potential users. The user will have the opportunity to explore what’s on campus and get their questions answered using those tools before finding an actual mentor.
Why did I make user flow diagrams?
I was thorough with the features I wanted to incorporate and wanted to iterate through and make them work better for the users hence I first started with the basic user user flow diagram followed by the detailed user flow diagram for both the mentor and the mentee.
MENTEE
Basic User Flow
First time user
MENTOR
Basic User Flow
First time user
Detailed userflow diagram
Sketches and wireframing
At this point, I analysed all the data and had a clear understanding of the features the app should contain. The objective was to address and alleviate user pain points through design. I started putting thoughts and ideas to paper. I first developed my first stage- Onboarding and Preferences followed by the second stage- Design Attributes. My goal here was to visualize the user interface, user interactions and flow of the app.
Onboarding & Preferences
Paper Prototype
The design features incorporated are based on the conclusions drawn from the background research and user interviews. A detailed wireframe was generated to understand the user flow and was validated by 4 user tests.
Inputs from the user tests
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"Transition from becoming a mentor from mentee can be smoother"
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"The notifications should give a small description of the match as I might have swiped a lot of probable mentors and wouldn't remember"
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"What content would the mentors see on the home page"
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"Can you help connect two mentors and create a space for them to interact and share knowledge"
Final Wireframing
Final Design Decisions
01: SECURITY
To help build a trustworthy environment for both men and women throughout the campus community.
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Account creation mandatory
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Sign in only via umich.edu ID
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Direct push notification sign in via Gmail
02: ONBOARDING
To familiarize user with the needs and make the process and time worthwhile.
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Standard welcome screen for brand identity "5 Ws"
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Skip option available
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Quick and easy questionnaire
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Selecting LinkedIn can pre-fill information
03: UPDATE-UP
Updates help patch security flaw and all the mentors and mentees deserve the latest and greatest.
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Form your social circle by following users
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Fun facts about the University
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Know about organized meetups
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Keep yourself updated about the campus life by viewing the highlights
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Switch to mentor from mentee and vice verca
04: MENTOR MATCH
To achieve the goal where students and alumni can approach in order to have access to leadership, education and opportunities
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View as either list or profile
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Details of the mentor can be viewed upon scrolling
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Calendar can be viewed and schedules can be made
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A note is mandatory to add a connection
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Mentor can be bookmarked
05: CHAT
To help bridge the gap between the users and provide a direct interaction platform
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Start chatting after accept
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Chat can be sorted according to scheduled appointments, latest connects etc.
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Upon chatting; a calendar, voice call, Google hangout invite and bookmark options are readily available
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The mentee can unmatch, block, remove connection anytime during the duration
06: EXPLORE
To provide students with basic information before getting to the mentor for advice
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International student societies
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Provisions for students with disability
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Translation for students with different languages
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A map that guides students to all the searched location
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Help find housing and roommates
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Financial guidance like banks, scholarships
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Academic resources like course works along with professors, citing data properly to prevent plagiarism
07: MENTEE MATCH
An incentive has been provided to the mentors to boost response rate and participation
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Display message prompts & bookmarked answers
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Accept or decline addition to incentive list
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View all the total number of matches beforehand
High Fidelity Mockups
Reflection
TAKEAWAY
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The two biggest challenges that I face were time and scope demarcation. This helped me test my potential.
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As the time was limited I learnt that user testing can do wonders. I was able to incorporate so many user suggestions and iterate my prototype
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It's important to keep the prototype as real as possible while testing to receive honest feedback
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I researched about various Google apps and tried to incorporate them (Google Calendar, Google Hangouts, Gmail, Google maps)
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Enhanced my Figma skills
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A good design solution is one that eventually solves the user problem.The smallest design interventions are the greatest
FUTURE
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As the time was limited the number of user tests conducted by me were only 5. In the future the testing could be increased to gain more feedback and suggestions and incorporate
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The explore screen has a bundle of options but I have designed only one of them to prototype (restaurants) proper prototyping of the rest need to be accomplished
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Add notes to the bookmarked things that directly get added to the calendar and reminders
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Currently the app lets users interact with each in the form of mentors and mentees, in the future a virtual chatbot can be incorporated that can help the mentees initial simple questions and link other websites like Reddit, Quora