Networking for designers and other professionals in related fields is essential yet it feels like a rather daunting experience. We surveyed how new designers approach networking, 72.41% confirmed that they find networking challenging and intimidating. It is easy enough to connect with peers and fellow students within a bootcamp or another academic programme but outside of it (or with no access to a bootcamp community) connecting is seen as a daunting and exhausting experience. This is particularly painful for introverts, those who are just at the start of their journey, within the online space. 90% of participants mentioned that they needed a starting point to engage conversations. Quite often, new designers just want to be able to talk to someone, learn from their experience but it feels intimidating reaching out to strangers and senior level fellows. As such, an idea was born to create a relaxed place to connect naturally, combined with a learning and social aspect.

Being a part of a designers community within out bootcamp, we decided to start our research by surveying colleagues and peers about their UX journey so far, their general approach and attitude to networking, main challenges on the journey and what was the most beneficial.
We received an overwhelming number of responses, with key takeaways: 

With that in mind, we dived into in-depth interviews to get answers for the following questions:

Check full interview guide

To process the amount of data we received, we use the Affinity map to synthesise it and find patterns and insights .We separated expectations from the app to use as a potential feature list.
The key needs and frustrations helped us define the course we were headed: organic networking, with introverts in mind.

With deep empathy for our persona, we looked at the list of frustrations and rapidly brainstormed HMW statements. We were looking at a complex problem with different angles:  networking, learning, managing resources, connecting, getting career advice, finding content, which needed various solutions.

To define the course of the product, we then used Jobs-to-be-done methodology to define the core jobs that our persona would want to hire our platform to achieve those. 
It all boiled down to the following:

The related job:

Based on our persona’s jobs-to-be-done and required functional solutions, with emotional aspect in mind, we started ideating solutions would address the needs and help with defined frustrations.
We focused on 4 flows:

As we leverage the method of automatic matching, and the curated content and personalised suggestions are at a core of our app, we build up a comprehensive onboarding process to gather as much information as possible at the very start.

With privacy issues in mind, we tried to be as transparent as possible to explain why and how the collected data is being used.

Thinking of what made it hard for introverts, we wanted to address awkwardness and robotic environment. We came up with a “Match of the Week” solution and a comprehensive onboarding process which allows us to make the first step towards networking with the right people instead of the user.

By the time the user enters the app, they are automatically matched with someone based on their interests, shared values and intentions within the app.

To build on that, we came up with a “Connections” page/feature where the user can see a list of recommended people to connect based in various factors important to them: location, specialisation/profession, industry, and so on. In other words, we leverage the law of attraction according to which we like people who are similar to us.

To help facilitate conversations and break the ice, we revamped the private messaging UI and added ice breakers (based on shared interests).

To provide a laid-back place to initiate conversations, hang out with peers and learn from each other, we created Live Coffee Rooms and offline Chat discussions.

Live rooms serve as informal meet ups and a safe and related way to socialise (invite a peer for a virtual coffee!), whereas chat rooms have a dual goal to be a less intimidating way to connect offline, passively connect while reading relevant threads, learn from others and exchange ideas. For the latter, we decided to develop a Sharing a Resource Flow to enable users to share their recommended curated content with individuals and chat rooms.

As the app is rather complex and, we explored a few variations of what the homepage should be as well as the nav bar

We created a few versions of the navigation around the app to access the main features and A/B tested to finalise the layout:

For the final usability testing we wanted to test the following:

For the conceptual 2.0 release, we would consider adding the following features:

Know where to stop
‍My biggest reflection from this project is to learn how to scale the project down to MVP and prioritise features. The scope of the app concept was enormous and given time constraints, we had to make strategic decisions.

Design quickly, test quickly
Once again, I learnt to trust the users and not my instincts, and work in a mini design sprints each week. By completing multiple rounds of ideating followed by user testing, we ended up with proven design that worked fluidly and intuitively which was out biggest win.