Women Connect

The Baseline

Instead of solving one of the problems, we decided to solve the common problem for three: How to find mentors that build on trust.

The Most Valuable Things

We found the silver lining of working together in all steps and building on each other's ideas! The workflow of the application is easy and intuitive. The design is clear and esthetically pleasing, and functional! The Completion of a functional design in a limited time was exciting!

In addition, we won First Place in the Girls In Tech SF 2021 Hackathon.

"What Activities Can I Do to Keep My Pet Healthy and Happy?"

Someone using the app to track pet’s activities can also find tutorial videos in the section (upcoming features). They can choose to start tracking or watching tutorials first.

New User Onboarding

Transparency is key. Letting users know what this app does to inform them and give them the right to decide whether continue or not.

"Can I Set up a Reminder?"

Someone wanting to add a reminder might ask questions like, “How can I remind myself to do medicine fill today? Can I link it to other platforms?” In this case, they would click the “+” to add a reminder to the existing schedule.

"Should I Add All Info at Once?"

Someone who just signed up might not be comfortable to fill all information at once. Giving them choices to do it now or later to reinforce the relationship.

Hi-Fi Prototype

The design of the Petsweet app on iOS result has received all positive feedback from pet owners, at the time of writing (one month since the MVP). However, as a hypothetical project, there is much more to do before this can be delivered for development.

Interested in my entire design thinking process?

Drop me a line and let's talk.

Contact Me

STAY WITHIN SCOPE

Trying different approaches is excellent, but make sure to stick with the plan. Otherwise, ruining the schedule is the result.

Learnings

REFLECTIONS

It's always difficult to fully understand the business goals from the outside, especially for a young designer like me standing from a distance. Being able to speak to listeners and collect feedback helped me understand the industry; however, if I could connect with stakeholders, it would help me expand the narrative beyond just the features.

Design for "How might we help female job seekers find mentors easier?

Swipe? Feed? or Questionnaire?

Crazy 8s method to brainstorm. And making decisions based on our persona and findings.

I heard us saying...

Women Connect Mobile App: First Place at GITSF2021 Hackathon

Pair Up Female Mentees With Mentors From The Industry

Pair and connect female mentees with female mentors from the target industries to get guidance in career transitions, job search, and more. A "most visual" look at the design journey.

The Problem

It's difficult to switch into the gender inequal tech field as a woman from a non-tech background. We want to help women connect with female mentors having similar experiences so that they can make a well-informed decisions.

Overview

Role

UX Research, UX/UI Design, Facilitation, Testing, Prototyping

Duration

2 days, November 12-14, 2021

Platform

iOS mobile

Industry

Information Software

Women Connect was born when I signed up for the Girls In Tech SF 2021 Hackathon with three females in November 2021. We were given a theme: Diversity and three statements for the event. We decided to solve one of the fundamental problems in the tech industry.

Background

How to solve the tech lack of diversity problem by understanding females’ inspiration and pain points.
How to create a solution that is easy to access for career-switching women.

The Goals

Finding the target user.
Figuring out what problems we were solving and what solutions we could take under the time constraints.
Working with a team whom I just met and knew nothing about.
Tight timeline - Within 24 hours.

The Challenges

The Process

1. RESEARCH

2. INSIGHTS

3. CONCEPT

4. DESIGN

5. CONCLUSION

6. LEARNINGS

Distill & Define

All three of the statements given were related to how to help underrepresented groups, especially women break into tech. After analyzing all the statements, we realized the bigger problem that women are facing in tech is that they don’t know where to find help.

Analyzed The Statements

Wireframes, Make Ideas Easy To See

After two hours of discussion about what was needed and not needed, we decided to create wireframes then quickly test what's working and what's not. Wireframes helped us quickly understand where information is missing in a flow and gave us a better understanding of the feature and structure.

Future Roadmap

Final Thoughts

Testing and further research

Conduct usability testing to understand if the app really solves women’s problems and meets their expectations. Interviews and surveys

Book/Schedule an appointment with mentor functionality

Having a calendar to allow meeting scheduling Feature to reschedule the existing booking Reminders and Notification feature for upcoming bookings

Making the application accessible

Adding light and dark themes and color schemes to provide more accessibility for all Support navigation through keys and usage of screen readers

Mentor Portal and a separate interface

Separate mentor from mentee portal and customize features; Collaboration with corporations to promote diversity in the workforce; Create a platform for employers to add job and internship opportunities.

Things I would do differently...

Our biggest challenge was to optimize and prioritize a variety of ideas and tasks. I would make sure to make an Information Architecture early on so the team could work more structurally.

I would include engineers in the team to make sure we make trade-offs with backup data.

I would learn more about team members more, not only professionally but personally. Being more empathetic and caring. Every work is work with human beings.

The hackathon was an amazing opportunity to learn a lot in a limited time. I learned:

Collaboration and working in a team with diverse backgrounds
Respecting and encouraging all types of ideas
Understanding each other's best skills
Using new tools There are many ideas we thought were cool.

Due to time constraints and other factors, we had to make tradeoffs. Get feedback and implement it ASAP. We had great opportunities to get connected with other mentors and teams but not direct users.

View Prototype

UI Kit and Design System

To make my future steps more accessible, I created a UI kit and designed a system to document all components and elements. One thing I've learned during this design process is always to keep files organized so that no matter who needs to use my file, they are easily navigate through.

"I'd like to track my pets' activities to keep them healthy and happy."

Someone using the app to track pet’s activities can also find tutorial videos in the section (upcoming features). They can choose to start tracking or watching tutorials first.

Design For Good!

Our diverse team of four amazing females with superpower 🦄

Have Fun 💃

The most important thing is that we had a lot of fun!

First Place 🥇

At Girls In Tech SF 2021 Hackathon.

User Interview

Due to the time given, we couldn't spare time to find target users to conduct interviews;

However, four minority women from different countries can't be more perfect for this topic. From our personal experiences backed up with research, we learned that our path was a struggle not only for us. Changing careers is so difficult without help from others. Learning from people who had a similar experience will empower all women for fast growth.

User Personas: Mentee & Mentor (upcoming)

I Sarah represents a free Tandem app user who wants to meet friends worldwide. The step helped me define the kind of users my feature would be targeting.

User Journey Map

By creating a user journey map, we understood users' frustrations and needs better.

Prioritize Tasks

For our hackathon, we want to make sure we have a flow that is complete and comprehensive, so we focused on the mentee flows since our target users are females looking for career switching.