Overview
Uni Connect is a prototype app for current and past university students to network with each other globally. The project was wireframed and prototyped in Adobe XD.
UniConnect
Aim
Students who struggle to create meaningful connections while studying can find themselves without job opportunities once they graduate. Uni Connect hopes to assist university students find connections to improve their chances of finding career opportunities via networking. The experience is meant to be a form gamified social media that is devoid of regular social media pressures.
Process & Methodologies
To begin the project, research was conducted on the provided design challenge: “How might we design digital design experiences to enable young people to achieve their career goals?”. We then began to identity potential target users. No personas were made for this project, but a rough target user was established. This pseudo persona was a student in their penultimate year of study who struggled finding connections on social media to establish a career. We iterated our problem statement to: “Given Anxiety's presence in students, how might we improve recent graduates develop of a stable network to develop a relevant career?”.
We brainstormed solutions and decided to develop an app for users to network without the pressures of regular social media. Our industry trend research revealed popularity in microtransactions, a transition away from monthly payments to one-time payments, and UI style trends such as flat design and minimalism.
Through the process of journey mapping, we identified numerous pain points and opportunities in the user experience. Pain points identified were: Initial onboarding due to negative social media experiences, social aversion, UI navigation. Potential opportunities could be reward systems for time investment, creating meaningful connections and visible progression.
We contemplated many methods to boost retention, but due to its popularity, we went with gamification. To research this retention method, we analysed Duolingo. How it managed users, and boosted retention through rewards, achievements, and notifications. After storyboarding a potential user journey, we began wireframing. Both paper wireframes and low fidelity wireframes were created, but no testing was conducted.
I attribute a lot of the downfalls and missteps in this design due to the lack of testing. Most unnecessary elements and inclusions could have been identified if more time was spent wireframing and testing multiple iterations of the design. To conclude the project, a high-fidelity prototype was created in Figma which was then presented to the client.
