Mengmeng Yao | Digital Designer
A web application for student entrepreneurs who participate in SIC program of OptiMize, University of Michigan.
Project Context
OptiMize is a student-led organization out of the University of Michigan that offers programs, mentorship, community and funding to student entrepreneurs who are focused on social impact work. They created a community for students to build skills, pursue passions, and take action on whatever they care about.
Check OptiMize’s website here.
OptiMize is looking for a platform to enhances accessibility to their content and resources, empowering their students to effectively contribute to social entrepreneurship projects and prepare for their future careers.
Timeframe
2 weeks
My Role
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I was the research lead in the team. I developed the research plan and led a team of 2 to conduct all researches. I pivoted the interview direction when we were facing the great challenge caused by limited access to target users and still gained valuable insights that guided the following development of this application.
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After research, I participated and played a vital role in the ideation and development.
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I conducted all usability testing testings and directed the team on the design reiteration.
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I owned the development of this hi-fi prototype and design system.
Skills
User research, prototyping, design system, usability testing
Problem
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There is currently a gap in the market for a project management tool designed specifically for students.
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Group projects often pose challenges for students as they must adapt to varying working paces and styles, leading to significant discomfort.
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Students engaged in group projects lack an efficient means of finding suitable teammates.
Goal
Develop a solution for students to:
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manage their SIC project in an intuitive and effortless way.
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easily check on with their teammates on the project progress.
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search for and connect with their peers and mentors based on their skill sets and relevant information.
Outcome
We designed a web application specifically for SIC’s students to manage their project and connect with the resources of OptiMIze. In the utility testing, 80% participants indicate this platform is easy to use and they would use it to manage their project.​
Product Features Walk Through
Project tracker and management that curated for SIC program
Directly keep every team member in the known of each other’s progress
Provide students with a platform to make mutual choice regarding collaboration based on skillset, interested topics and other relevant information
A Glance at the Research
The Great Challenges
After learning the basics of OptiMize, my first instinct was to talk to the users of this platform to learn about their experience and pain points with it. However, although we did have a very clear definition of the users – students in University of Michigan who participate in the OptiMize program, but it proved to be extremely to reach any of them since we don’t have any connections.
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As the leader of the research team, I decided to broaden our interviewee target to include student activists who have experience in social entrepreneurship.
Based on this, we sent out a survey to filter them out. Unfortunately, we only received 10 feedback from the survey during the timeframe.
Find patterns in the chaos
OptiMize offers a wide range of programs designed for various audiences, creating a sense of abundance that can be overwhelming. Each program has its own unique name, such as SIC, moMentum, aMplify, and eMergy. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of OptiMize's offerings and initiatives, we thoroughly explored their website. As a result, we created mind maps that helped us identify the flagship program, which is also the one we should focus on: the Social Innovation Challenge (SIC) program.
INSIGHT
The contents and activities of the Social Innovation Challenge (SIC) program are meticulously organized and follow a structured timeline, akin to a traditional college course.
User Interview
With these informations, we were able to broaden the scope again and determine our interview goals – Learn about students' experience in managing their projects and school resources while working in a group with their peers and teachers. Learn about their expectation and frustrations in project management and collaboration.
This made our work much easier. We went out to talk to 11 college students about
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the current PM tools they are using
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the student portal their school provided
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the process and feeling of their last group project.
INSIGHT
Students face specific challenges during their group project because of the lack of managing experience.
Problem and Solution
Optimize SIC students will need a better way to manage the collaborate on the SIC project and utilize the OptiMize resources so they can make the most of this program and be well prepared for my future career.
Challenge-01
Anxiety and mistrust caused by different pace and working style
Students take the initiative to devise various strategies in addressing this matter. In addition to establishing explicit deadlines for each assigned task, they prioritize the continuous exchange of updates regarding everyone's progress. Because a. the sense of knowing makes them feel more in control and b. they believe using others as a reference will be helpful in self-discipline.
Solution and Reiteration
Taking into account this feedback, we dedicated significant efforts to developing a comprehensive project progress tracker and individual team member tracking system. Initially, we incorporated a "reminder" button, enabling users to easily send reminders to teammates who might be lagging behind on their schedules with only one click. However, during our extensive usability testing, we discovered that the majority of users expressed reluctance to utilize this feature as they did not wish to be perceived as the ones pushing their peers.
1st Iteration
Reiteration
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REITERATE
Use system notification as a way to remind users of the work that is behind schedule.
Reiteration
REITERATE
Removed the REMINDER button.
Challenge-02
Students don't know how to reach out to potential teammates
They typically adopt one of two approaches when forming teams: either relying on their professors to assign team members or selecting teammates based on personal relationships, regardless of whether those individuals possess the necessary skills required for the project.
Solution and Reiteration
To address this challenge, we have devised a solution in the form of a "Student LinkedIn" that enables students to connect with one another based on their professions and skills. Within the "People" tab, we have incorporated profiles of students, mentors, and projects, providing relevant information for potential collaborations.
However, during usability testing, users consistently expressed confusion when searching for projects they wished to contribute to under the "People" tab. To resolve this issue, we have restructured the site map, ensuring that the project directory is placed in a category that intuitively makes sense to users.
First Iteration
Reiteration
REITERATE
The newly added “project” tab will contain “my project” and the project directory
REITERATE
The “people” tab will only contain student directory and mentor directory.
Challenge-03
Lack of specific managing tools for their project
INSIGHT
Student don’t use mainstream PM tools because the limited budget and their projects are comparatively simple
INSIGHT
There’s a huge gap between what students use for project management and the mainstream PM tools
Solution and Reiteration
In order to preparing students for real world entrepreneurship as well as real world project management, we decided it’s a good chance for them to experience some simple project management that match with the characteristics of their projects with this web applications. After a thorough Comparative and Competitive analysis of PM tools, we decided to keep only the essential features of PM software for OptiMize: project tracking and task delegation.
Our decision was supported by usability testing, which indicated that 80% of users found the functionality of this platform sufficient. The remaining 20% primarily consisted of professional managers.
Nevertheless, we received valuable feedback on areas that needed improvement, and we made the necessary adjustments accordingly.
First Iteration
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INSIGHT
Users frequently confusing about this module. Without context, they don’t know what is a “student leader”(which is student managers of the OptiMizer organization). Some of the users thought this is their own profile.
Reiteration
REITERATE
Users indicated they want to access mentors (and other contacts) directly from dashboard. So we decided on this “recent contact” module, which will also include the student leader mentioned above.
REITERATE
Add important information about project progress on dashboard for better accessibility.
First Iterration
Reiteration
REITERATE
We updated the pie-chat to a bar-chart, which conveys message in a more direct and clear way.
INSIGHT
Users indicate they need some time and effort to compare the process of each teammates in a pie chart
Reiteration
REITERATE
Based on usability testing, we add some elements that proved to be important to our users: due date for each task, a list for overdue tasks, and using color coding to convey different urgency level
Maintain Consistency with a Design system that stay close to OptiMize
The Style Guide
In order to ensure consistency with the OptiMize branding style, our approach involved creating a design system that incorporated graphic elements from the official website. This entailed reusing the website's font, color scheme, and even elements from their logo.
Check the full Figma file HERE.
