Freelance Product Designer
(UX & Strategy)
ProjectSet
University virtual work and projects
Role: ProjectSet, London, 2020-21. Lead UX and Product Strategist. Working in a design collective with a product designer. Created approach and led the project to rethink and redesign their current virtual project platform for students, teachers and employers. This was another project that needed our momentum during the pandemic to launch in January 2021.
Key skills: Product management and strategy, design thinking, user research and information architecture.
Client background: Project Set are a self-funded startup helping students prepare for the future by gaining real work experience. The platform allows students to find, apply and take part in virtual internships, hackathons and uni projects.
Rethink, streamline and redesign
1. The mission
The founders of the ed-tech startup wanted to us rethink and redesign their current virtual project platform for students, teachers and employers. The platform suffered from feature overload and significant usability issues.
I with my design partner focused on the following objectives:
Removing features that could be validated with a user need
Prioritising the most valuable user journeys and features
Mapping out key UJs for students, lecturers and employers
Rationalising features and components across the different UJs
Coaching the client to avoid repeating the same product design flaws
Focus, prioritise and challenge everything
2. The approach
Work samples
User journey flows - prioritising the most valuable first
Wireframes - where necessary tested and validated quickly
Brand experience - a modern look and feel, designed to resonate with students and their future careers
Balance tasks and discovery features - a simplified experience for students to work on multiple different virtual projects, whilst enabling the discovery of new opportunities
Disruptive campaigns - striking the right visual balance for disruptive campaigns
The design system - a flexible design system to enable hackathon campaigns to have a bespoke, bold look and feel
Brand and visual design by Jonathan Burrows
Quick turn around to launch
3. Outcomes
The UX and UI outputs enabled the development team to ramp up and launch the new platform in rapid time. We provided QA support during this period to ensure they launched without delays.
Key outputs from myself and designer:
Product feature roadmap (value based)
Feature backlog and ideas carpark to test and validate
Evolved brand experience
IA, flows, wireframes and screens
Design component library
Product ready documentation
4. Conclusion
I really enjoyed working with the co-founders and team. They embraced our rigour, design thinking and backed down when challenged. I wanted to coach them in focusing on the most important features and experience. New ideas are great, however, should be parked until the most fundamental features are delivered. Happy that they launched quickly and during the lockdown period.