Role

Lead UX Designer

Duration

4 weeks
December 2023

Team

Crystal Li
DanaAnne Burnham
Nimra Erfan

Raising women up through career interruptions.

Skills

UX Design
User Research
Wireframing
Product Strategy

Tools

Figma
Google Suite

Project Overview

Project Goal:

What we accomplished:

Be Uninterrupted is a female-led, Canadian-based start-up with the vision to be the leading digital resource for professional women, delivering integrated, personalized, and relevant information and resources at their fingertips.

As a team of 3 UX Designers, we were brought on to this project to research, prototype, and design the minimum viable product that will be ready to be built and tested. Of which, a dashboard was needed to have the project up and running.

  1. Conducted a comprehensive survey to identify the most valued service for women in navigating career blockers.

  2. Analyzed survey results to determine that 'Mentorship' is the most relevant service, leading to the design of user flow.

  3. Created wireframes based on the user flow to ensure they suffice as the Minimum Viable Product.

  4. Designed application and intake forms in alignment with specified criteria from the Product Map.

  5. Developed designs for the dashboard, mentorship matching, and mentor profile page. Multiple iterations were conducted based on feedback received.

Understanding Our Users

An informational survey was created to better understand target users’ professional aspirations and needs. From the 39 responses we got, one insight that stood out was that an overwhelming majority of respondents valued 1:1 Mentorship Sessions the most.

Networking Events & Awards also had a high average rating, but with our time constraints in mind, after discussing with the client, we ultimately decided to focus on mentorship for the first round of deliveries.

Personas

After synthesizing our survey results, we created two personas of professional women each in different stages of their lives. The goal of creating personas was to identify the unique career and personal aspirations of the users, we then asked ourselves:

How might we develop a tool that supports career advancement and assists women in navigating career interruptions to foster their professional growth?

Designs to Reflect Brand Identity

Our client worked with a marketing professional to generate a few color palette options. After some competitor research and debliteration, we helped to decide on this palette that appears professional, royal, and trustworthy.

Navigating Through Changes

Given the 4-week timeline we were on, it was only feasible to design for one user flow. Initially, we decided to create the entire onboarding and the mentor-matching process.

User Flow Ver. 1

In later weeks, a few changes were revealed to us as the client continued to work on product strategy, which we incorporated into an updated user flow as well as design iterations.

  • Users need to apply to be accepted to the program. Therefore, there should be a place for them to learn more before applying.

  • An intake form is crucial to ingesting information about the users’ professional and personal information.

  • Users are not able to search and pick out their mentors. Instead, they will be matched with someone who has the skills that best suit their immediate needs.

User Flow Ver. 2

Design Interations

I made multiple changes to the final design iteration after taking feedback from usability testing and comments from clients and supervisors. Many chenges were implemented due to directional pivots in product strategy.

Low-Fidelity

High-Fidelity

For full access to the designs, please click here to Figma.

Application Form

  1. Now serves two purposes: educating the user and ingesting information.

  2. Plan and pricing information are added to give users a better sense of the product and what it entails before applying.

  3. Referral codes are also implemented since the service is invitation-only.

  4. Potential users now have to input their credit card information upon application to eliminate the extra step, but won’t be charged until they are accepted to the program.

Mentor Landing Page

  1. Fewer mentor options are displayed because users are now getting matched to someone based on their preferences by the system.

  2. Favorites are added so users can bookmark mentors and connect with them later, in case they do not want to do so right away.

  3. Rematch is now possible to eliminate the frustrations users may experience if they do not see a match.

Mentor Profile

  1. Mentees no longer need to request to connect as mentors are getting assigned to them.

  2. Showcases top skills so that mentees have a better understanding of why they were matched to their specific mentors.

  3. Favorite status and whether or not the mentor status is now visible on the mentor profile page.

Dashboard

  1. Refined sidebar to reflect new product features.

  2. Highlights Mentorship / Support network and implemented the credit system.

  3. Progress is now in tune with the Work-Life Plan, which shows specific goals for the user.

  4. Personalized recommendations include personalized motivations and inspirations.

My Takeaways

Designing with time constraints

Communication and feedback

What I would have done differently?

Given the startup nature of this project, things were changing every week. Our clients were still very much in the process of fine-tuning their product features, thus, seeing everything get sketched out inspired them in many ways. This presented a challenge to designers as we had to adapt to constant changes.

We were also running on a less-than-4-week timeline, so we had to understand our bandwidth and set realistic expectations with our clients. We utilized research findings to find out and design the minimum viable product that’s ready to be built out.

During the kick-off call, we decided to follow a weekly meeting schedule and make ourselves available via chat. However, with the constant change happening each day and week, we quickly realized more frequent communication is needed. We started to check in more often and share our designs with our clients for immediate feedback before they get fully fleshed out.

One of the most valuable takeaways from this project is being able to handle feedback adequately, both from UX professionals and people with little to no design and research background. I have learned to empathize with their comments while explaining my design thinking, to make sure everything was on the same page.

  1. Design the user interface while taking into account how the project is going to expand in the future. For example, consider designing for mobile responsiveness.

  2. Delve into other product offerings to provide a more enriched experience for the users.

  3. Creating a better sense of cohesion amongst the designs from different designers on the team.