Web app
Career tech
Hi-fi prototype
Figma UI Kit
System thinking
Accessibility
User research
Usability testing
Product strategy
Product design
Product strategy
UIUX design
Foundational design
OKIE
Designing a side-project matchmaker web app for entry-level professionalsLed the entire onboarding exp & Home page design.
Fully involved in product design from start to finish.
Feb - May, 2024
12 Weeks
Product design
Product strategy
Interaction design
Prototyping
Information Architecture
User research
User testing
Figma
Typeform
Notion
Google Suite
Entry-level professionals often seek side project experience, needing collaboration with professionals from similar or different fields. How can individuals with similar side project needs find each other effectively?
Preliminary idea
Design a web app that matches side project teammates
Considering combining job postings with matchmaking—what if we let project idea owners publicly post their projects, allowing individuals interested in joining a team to view the posts and connect with them?
Key Design Solutions
01
Intuitive Project Posting Guide ensures an effortless and informative project idea sharing
The posting guide simplifies sharing side project ideas. By including key details, it ensures project initiators create informative posts that provide potential participants with all the necessary information.
02
Efficient and transparent Home dashboard for teammates and project browsing
Users can seamlessly switch between two modes—browsing user profiles, skills, and past projects to find teammates or filtering project opportunities to discover teams that align with their interests. The card design on Home prioritizes key information for quick and effortless browsing.
03
Management tool helps organizing and finding the right fit strategically
Users can save and categorize potential teammates or project teams that catch their attention. The management tool allows for easy comparison, helping them identify and connect with the best people or teams efficiently.
What’s special about OKIE? What’s special about OKIE? What’s special about OKIE? What’s special about OKIE?
01Beyond co-workers: find like-minded people
The onboarding design guides you to share not only typical professional info but the personal side of you. Find not just 'co-workers,' but compatible friends you'll enjoy working with all the time :)
02Two-way communication is encouraged to foster reliable team building
Text & oral communicating help users accurately assess compatibility. Thus, we include loads of 'Have a Chat' access points, encouraging initiators and participants to talk or even schedule meet-ups before teaming up.
- Project initiators can chat with ideal teammates anytime, anywhere.
- Project participants can reach out to initiators on demand. It's two-way communication!
User survey
Getting to know our users
We did a survey to understand the demographics and preferred tools/channels of people who’s interested in doing side projects. From 34 collected responses, we identified key patterns:
30/34 respondents prefer to team up with people they already know, like classmates, colleagues, and friends, showing their trust in direct connections.
The top 3 factors that influence users' decisions when choosing a platform to find teammates are 'verification of teammates' work quality,' 'ease of reaching out to potential teammates,' and 'accessibility to people's work/educational background.'
User interviews
Reveal users’ painpoints
Through 6 in-depth interviews and affinity mapping, we concluded 3 top user painpoints in finding teammates and participating in side projects.
Users want to verify the background, experience, and work quality of potential teammates.
Users lack trust in working with complete strangers.
Users prefer to have real-time conversations with potential teammates before teaming up.
Personas & Journey Maps
Visualize user goals and challenges to streamline experiences and uncover product opportunities.
To address the differences we discovered through interviews, we created 2 personas:
- Project Initiator, who has ideas in mind
- Project Participant, who wants to join an initiated team.
These personas and journey maps drive user-centered design to meet diverse user expectations.
Concluded user’s problem statement —
“As an early career professional, I need information assurance and efficiency to team up with individuals who match my preferences for side projects.”
Which further lead to the how-might-we question
How might we foster efficient and reliable information exchange to facilitate early career professionals in teaming up with individuals who match their preferences for side projects?
Ideation
Explore inspiration from existed products
To kickstart the design process, we analyzed 6 competitor platforms that people use to find side project connections, evaluating their reliability, efficiency, and the information sufficiency provided.
We also did lightning demos to gain these feature inspirations:
- Succinct onboarding
-
Filters to sort teammates/projects
-
Card design
-
Verification system
- Feature to encourage communication
Gather insights & brainstorm design solutions
Building on our exploration, we identified key design ideas to address the problem statement and brainstormed ways to integrate them into the product.
Preliminary design
Define task flows
To begin, we mapped out 3 essential task flows to ensure core features are intuitive.Focus on structure and functionality with mid-fidelity wireframes
We built mid-fi wireframes to transform feature ideas into tangible interfaces, only focusing on experimenting layouts but not visuals.
Define style guide to emphasize product’s positioning
Our style guide embodies a lively and approachable vibe, striking a balance between professionalism and friendliness.Prototype
Craft a polished and complete product with high-fidelity prototype
After refining wireframes iteratively, we built the interactive high-fi prototypes with polished visuals for user testing.Check out the demos of 3 majors flows
Onboarding Project Initiator Project Participant
Usability tesiting
Conduct moderated user test to assess the feasibility and obstacles of main features
6 Participants used the hi-fi prototype to complete tasks based on 2 persona scenarios. We also asked follow-up questions to gain their feedbacks on the product. Key Iterations
01Adjust ‘intention setting’ flow for better guidance & transition
We moved the question about users' intentions for using the product from the beginning to the end of the onboarding process. This helps guide users to start finding projects or teammates after onboarding, facilitating a smooth transition to the main pages.
Restructure teammate card layout to include more intuitive details
Based on user test feedback, we replaced long text with personality tags, renaming 'Connect' button to 'Have a Chat', adding time zone of the user to indicate working hours compatibility, and compacting star ratings for a concise layout.
Prioritize skills and experience in users’ profile page
On profile pages, we prioritized users’ skills and past work experience on the top because when reviewing teammates, most users value them more than personal introductions.
Considering the project initiator's perspective, we also added a small AI recommendation feature to show how well the other user matches the project needs you've specified.
Outcome
We compiled OKIE's design process into a presentation and shared it with five professional product designers who worked in industry for feedback. They loved our storytelling, calling it a comprehensive and detailed development journey. Our design also sparked their ideas on how to bring the product to life.
Feedback & going foward
Based on feedback, we learned that 'encouraging communication' is a core principle of our product, but it hasn't been emphasized hugely in the current design.
Moving forward, our next step for the product involves enhancing communication during chats between project initiators and participants.