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My role
I joined APMC, as one of the UX/UI designers to redesign the product, especially for its annual product hackathon program, and other services, where I was in charge of the early design process as well as overlooked execution of the design, and conditionally worked on increasing site performance, through continuous iterations, holding meetings with designers and managers, when needed.
Challenges:
To re-design the APMC site for annual hackathons and iterate for a better user experience.
Tools used:
Figma, Adobe XD, Notion, and Wix
Team:
5 (3 designers, 2 Product managers)
Time:
5 month [Aug- Dec 2023]
About APMC
The Aspiring Product Managers Club at Northeastern University is a pioneering hub exclusively devoted to product management. It serves as a vibrant space where members build innovative products, engage in mentorship sessions (such as Northstar and Meteor), and participate in exciting hackathons (like its Product hackathon) and challenges, this hackathon is conducted over the course of 1 month and has significantly seen an increase in registration.
First Iteration and Challenges Encountered
1. The design system was still a work in progress and the previous team had yet to do a competitive analysis to better understand needs and interface navigation.
2. The team was short-staffed and due to time constraints, they had jumped directly to design user flows to high-fidelity clickable frames, so making changes in the final design became a challenge after user testing.
3. Since this club at Northeastern was one of its kind, the user research to understand needs became a challenge and so did designing user flows.
Design thinking approach
To brief about the steps I took the designing thinking approach, and worked around problem sets up to build hi-fidelity wireframes, The steps are further explained in detail below:
Gathered user feedback, by conducting a survey
Defined goals for redesigning by briefly outlining the project scope and objectives
Brainstormed solutions, by hosting sessions with Designer
Got approvals from managers and iterated on designs
Built mi-fidelity on Figma, and Hi-fidelity clickable wireframes
Used analytics tools like HotJar to conduct user acceptance testing
Develop low-fidelity wireframes to visualize design concepts.
Iterated on the design based on real-world usage and user feedback
Lo-Fi wireframes
We first started by drafting user flows to revamp the site wherein I also spearheaded brainstorming sessions with the team to map out the design requirements, user needs, and product objectives to build the wireframes, after which I sat with the design team to craft basic wireframes.
Hi-Fi Prototype
Post testing, them we went to iterate and craft the final prototype
Usability testing
We utilized data like heatmaps, click rates, bounce rates, to iterate on designs, post testing.
Impact created
750+
Total sessions
As a design lead, with a team of three designers and four mangers, I managed to achieve more than 750 site sessions
>600
Daily Active Users
Currently,after the success of the product hakathon, we have nearly 800 active users
15%
Bounce rate
The bounce rate, was reduced significantly, due to constant updates, and iterations
Mentorship sessions
As a product designer, I was invited to host sessions, to explain 100+ to aspiring product managers and designers the importance of UI/UX in a product, how to design MVP, and how to leverage the Figma tool and simplify its usage. As a mentor, I have shared a list of plugins and resources like Neilson Norman for designing a product and conducting user research.
