PERSONAL PROJECT — AUG 2024
A Warmer Way to Keep in Touch with Your Professional Network—No Spreadsheets Included.
TIMELINE
1-Week Design Sprint
ROLE
Product Thinking, Visual Design, Prototyping
TEAM
Solo Project
TOOLS
Figma
Protopie
CONTEXT
Starting a conversation is easy, but staying connected is tough
Following up is one of the most important things you can do
Before we did anything in Figma, we spent our first month simply as founders and thinking about problem spaces.
That helped me develop a sense for product thinking before I created a single wireframe.
Keeping in touch builds strong relationships
A strong network can change your career
FIG. 1
Our first homework assignment — thinking of 30 problems.
4 CompSci students find founder-market fit in dev tools
One thing that we had in common was a deep understanding of problems that engineers face and the way that they approached problems.
EXPLORATIONS
Current band-aid solutions are manual and difficult to maintain
We were drawn to technical problems that we faced too.
Our deep understanding of problems that engineers face and the way that they approach solving problems allowed us to ask the right questions.
THE SOLUTION
Helping your future self
SOLUTION HIGHLIGHT
Bundling user feedback and developer details for better debugging
Making a Comment
Leaving enough time for people to discover and participate, but not so much time that they would leave it for later.
Capturing a Snapshot (what’s going on BTS)
We needed to make it as easy as possible for parents to understand and use while keeping them engaged throughout the process.
This is the "ideal world" solution. AI is not currently at the point where it can generate high quality custom crosswords.
More about this below!
THE PROCESS
Leaning on my technical background to be a collaborator to my Developers
Keeping them in the loop about my design decisions
As soon as we committed to our idea, I met with my developers to understand the data we wanted to provide and the best way to display it to our target audience — other engineers.
Structuring an optimal design and development timeline
We have an extremely limited view of our parents' lives.
There are rich experiences, relationships, etc. that we may never really know unless we ask or something prompts them to share.
Creating development-ready design files
We have an extremely limited view of our parents' lives.
There are rich experiences, relationships, etc. that we may never really know unless we ask or something prompts them to share.
RESULT
Shipped my first ever product — and won judge's choice along the way
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key takeaways from the project
Learn by doing
Dream big — you never know what you could end up with!
You don't always have to design end-to-end
Make sure the strongest areas of value are the most developed.
Multiplayer UX needs crystal clear visuals.
Break down how each interaction affects each person in the flow.
THE FULL DESIGN PROCESS
There's a lot more to see behind the scenes!
If you want to see the detailed research and design explorations that went into crafting this experience, please reach out to me!
I typically walk people through this in an interview environment or coffee chat.