Portfolio

Last Updated on

27/8/2022 9:37 AM

Demo

Teammates

Hoon Chee Ping [technical co-founder]

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My Role

Non-technical cofounder

⭐ Featured Skillset

Transform conceptual ideas into valuable features
Designed user flows
Designed wireframes and clickable prototype using Adobe XD
Designed various artifacts using Adobe Illustrator
User experience research: shadowing and usability testing ⭐

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Prototype

Background

We wanted to let introverts have the option of inviting a friend of a friend (mutual friend) to an event if their friends were not available or interested in it. The inspiration came from Nicholas Christakis “Three Degree of Influence”. We had stopped working on the project due to poor product-market fit.

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The Challenge

The problem with current solutions such as MeetUp is the user's hesitation of joining something new due to fear of strangers.

Our high-level goals were to:

Reduce the friction of attending meetups
Give users a way to discover meetups more easily
Create a platform for building communities and discovering friends

Discovery / Research

At the outset of the project, we didn’t have a clearidea of the meetup experience, so we decided to carry out online research onsources familiar with MeetUp and equivalents such as Facebook’s events. Onlineforums like Quora and Reddit proved to be a treasure trove of information wherepeople posted their views and opinions without censoring them. One difficulty wefaced during the discovery phase was finding offline sources. Most peoplearound us were not familiar with MeetUp and had no difficulty joining events(this was an early warning sign which we didn’t pick up on).

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Insights

Meetups that work out are amazing though they are mostlymisses.

Not fitting in to the clique, i.e., being too differentfrom others can make newcomers feel left out and excluded.

To avoid this pitfall, introverts are more comfortableattending meetups together with their friends; however, this is not possibleevery time. Their friends may not be available or may not be interested in theevent.

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Reframing the Problem

This begged the question; how might we help introverts find companions for a physical event? Our proposal was MintUp, where users can attend events or join communities with a friend or their social circle.

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The Solutions and MVP features

Essentially, we were redesigning the MeetUp platform. At its core, the product should function in a similar fashion by allowing users to create groups and events and search for existing ones by location and category. However, the redesigned platform should allow groups and events to interact online. For example, a messaging system, or friends’ system could be implemented. These features would promote network effects and drive the platform’s growth.

Aside, to tackle the root of the problem, we needed to consider how an introvert would find a companion to join him in a physical meetup. We intended to link him/her up with their mutual friend and we had to design how this would work. We implemented this by adding a line “Don’t want to go alone? Click to Mint” to posts. To reduce the number of clicks, an algorithm would find suitable mutual friends and prompt them to accept the “mint”.

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Sketch of user flow diagram

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Sketch of simple wireframe (others)

Sketch of simple wireframe (menu)

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Design Strategy

Since it was my first project, there were no obvious design strategies, and I went mostly with my gut feeling. I remember accessing sites like dribbble to mimic designs which I felt were suitable.

First, I had sketched some low-fidelity wireframes and discussed the flow and user interactions with my co-founder. As we refined the frames and flows, we started working on the high-fidelity prototype on Adobe XD.

I had also created a colour palette that would suit the brand (this included a dark and light theme). This colour palette would form the basis of my design, including the brand logo and UI elements.

After creating the hi-fi wireframe, we injected content and copy which we felt were suitable and stitched it all up into a clickable prototype.

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The Launch

The launch was simple. I had managed to convince around 5 friends to join us for user testing by bribing them with some snacks and drinks. We wanted to implement user shadowing but there was no way to replicate a natural environment of them using an MVP. Instead, we used screen share and observed how users interacted with the clickable prototype. We then recorded our observations into a word document.

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The rules we abided during the testing sessions

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Recorded results from one of the sessions:

🤐 Cautious about sharing too much of my personal info online, especially if they are random strangers over the net
😞 How close can we be close to someone we only talk to? Most of the time someone is going to stop replying.
😌Can make new friends IRL if it's localised and close.
😐 Meeting on an app might be a bit easier than meeting in person for a while

Some problems we noticed were how unwieldy it was. Many users did not understand how the app worked. Most importantly, they did not see the value of such an app because they would choose not to go to a foreign event if it wasn’t important enough and proceed to join an event alone if it meant enough. An event like meeting strangers for a hobby belonged to the former, and an event like joining a competition belonged to the latter.

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Things that could be improved

Undertaking a more rigorous research process to determine product-market fit. This would prevent carrying out abortive work, although this was still a good experience of failing fast and learning faster.

The problem did not lie with users feeling uncomfortable about joining meetups instead the root problem laid with users not finding the right group to make them feel included in the first place. An online platform which showcases the “flavour” of the community and allows newcomers to feel welcomed would be a better solution to the problem. This could come in the form of channels or servers.

Brushing up on my UI/UX design skills.

The first was creating user personas to identify user goals and pain points. This would have prevented us from being derailed by bringing in friends who did not necessarily fit the personas for user tests. It would have also allowed us to focus on a specific problem for a niche market and in doing so build and design a product loved by these early-adopters.
Diagramming user flows would have ensured a smooth user experience
The look and feel of the hi-fi prototype would have been better if I had a solid design foundation and design strategy. For example, in this prototype, there was a lack of visual hierarchy, not using appropriate negative space, and failing to maintain consistency across UI elements.
Reiterating the design process would have improved the prototype but this would only be applicable if it had good product-market fit in the first place.

The Impact

There was negligible external impact. However, the opportunity from failing and idea invalidation meant there was much learning and self-reflection to be done.

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Reflection

Kickstarted my UI / UX Design journey and piqued my interest in product design. It was my first ever experience working on a tech project - first of many future projects to come. I understood that there was a long way to go in terms of picking up product design. My key takeaway is failing fast, taking the feedback from users and teammates seriously.

Appendix

Runners' Club

Aug 2020 - Jul 2021

Student Club | Publicity & Publications Subcommittee

As the Assistant Publicity Officer of the NTU Runners' Club, I had undertaken several design related projects. Starting with the official rebranding by creating a style guide for our club. From there, we used the style guide to redesign our logo, club shirts and social media posts.

Some notable accomplishments included designing collaterals for ruNTUgether and Race Bingo, university-wide events that the club had planned and executed while also advertising and publicizing our sponsors.

During weekly official run days, we Assistant Publicity Officers were in charge of photography and also managing the social media accounts. Additionally, we had the responsibility of leading groups of 5 (limited due to COVID) on the runs.

Welfare Services Club

Aug 2020 - Jul 2021

Student Club | Publicity & Publications Subcommittee

Designed two magazine articles, a longform investigative piece "Apart but Not Alone: COVID-19 & The Elderly" on Page 10-11 and an infographic "COVID 19 in Singapore: A Summary" on Page 32-33, as part of the 15th issue of the club's annual magazine "StandOUT". The magazine was published university-wide.

Designre

Aug 2020 - Sep 2020

Personal Project | Education & UI/UX Design

Designed and created Instagram posts intended to teach others about UI/UX design. Topics I have posted about include:

UI / UX are NOT the same thing
Why is UI / UX design important
What about graphic designers
What is the interface in UI?
How about aesthetics?
Brand Identity
Product Design

Accenture Collateral

May 2020 - Aug 2020

Graphic Design | Page Layout Design | Copywriting

Designed Changi Airport Group's quarterly newsletter and DIVA's product catalogue.

Due to non-disclosure agreement, please contact me for more details!

CCTeam Initiative

Aug 2019 - Jan 2020

Student Initiative

Proposed a project “Resumption” which aimed to reduce waste in hotels and raise awareness on responsible consumption in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Led team comprising former members of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) eTournament (see resume) from Taiwan and Hong Kong to ideate and create a sustainable development project lasting up to 6 months and funded for HKD50,000 . Our proposal for "Resumption" had garnered the approval of the reviewing committee over the other submitted proposals. The project was discontinued due to the Hong Kong riots and COVID pandemic which shut down tourism in Hong Kong and effectively stopped our proposal from being implementable.

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Project Proposal

Proposal Review and Approval

Startup Project

MintUp

Demo

Teammates

My Role

See more of my work:

OUIYO

Shopee's Power Trio

Where2Clean

Glass Creative Suite

DesignCourse Challenge

presend

MintUp

Others