DESIGN CHALLENGE
Developers are very community open-source oriented and have an interest in collaborating with other developers. There are many social sites that focus on a developer audience; however, these sites and online services are typically structured as public, large forums or public chat platforms where responses and conversation between developers can be disorganized and require filtering for quality.
OPPORTUNITY
Hakka Labs wanted to improve the on-boarding process and demonstrate clear incentives for user return while maintaining the platform’s focus of providing developers with a space to log their work and discover better matches.
My Role
As UX Designer I drove the strategic vision and overall design from kickoff through execution, conducted brand research and user interviews. I led both wireframe and high fidelity design interaction, and responsible for the delivery of the final prototype.
Time
This project was developed during a three-week design sprint for General Assembly’s
UX Design Immersive
Team
Project Team: Hugo Cavalcanti and Kayla Farrell
Competitive/ Comparative analysis
We conducted an overall analysis of existing sites and digital services used for any relationship discovery (friendship, mentorship, etc), existing sites and digital services focused on social networking of developers and sites that developers currently used for connecting with other developers. We looked at basic understanding of each site’s functions and features as well as user flows for completing the main task of finding another developer and connecting or sharing work.
Surveying the existing market revealed that there is no true competitor for engineer matching. Existing sites and services used for communication between developers revealed that, although these sites claim to have a social networking goal, they are either project/ problem specific or lack an intimate and collaborative communication between developers. The same was true for online mentorship services. The evaluation of these sites, however provided us with an understanding of successful and unsuccessful features being used.
Public Post
Public Chat
File Sharing
Public Chat
Public Post
File Sharing
Private Chat
File Sharing
User Matching
Private Chat
User Matching
Engineer Matching before redesign
1 Separate menus on side panel for profile, matches, integrations and help
2 It is not immediately obvious how to contact matches on the side panel "Matches"
3 The instructions are not obvious and do not attract attention. There is confusion about the logs and the user is not sure what to do in order to get matches
4 Separate menus for “Invites” and “Matches”
5 The path to get help is not fast and clean for users
USER EXPERIENCE TO GET MATCH
After user input what they are working on to Matchbot. The matching output occurs off site via personal email with Github and LinkedIn profile to matched users make network by themselves.
DIARY STUDY & OBSERVATION
We selected 2 participants to go through the engineer matching on-boardingprocess on the existing site and either speak out loud while they were going through the process and/orrecord their thoughts via ‘diary entry’. This process was documented 11/23/15 – 12/5/15.
USER FEEDBACK
We were provided with user feedback of existing users by Hakka Labs. This feedback echoed our findings in contextual observation and diary study. The users consisted of developers ranging in code knowledge who had been either using the site frequently or recently started to use the site.
insights of user feedback
• Users are confused after sign up and assume they are logging into a chatroom
• Users don’t know how or what to log on engineermatching
• Users don’t understand what “match type” means within the profile
• Users don’t know where or how to get instructions through the terminal
• Users don’t know what the next step is to talk to their match
• Users like the idea of being matched with another user
• Users are confused by communication being outside the site
• Users don’t understand how they are being matched
• Users are confused by matches that are not relevant to their interests
USER RESEARCh
SCREENER SURVEY CRITERIA
The screener survey was distributed to the public to seek out potential target users. Target users were software engineers and developers with at least a base knowledge of code.
User Insights
Participants also completed two card sorting tasks to determine what information the target user expected to see on other user profiles and to gauge user priority of features when completing the task of connecting with another developer.
synsthesis
This chart is a compilation of repeating themes from user research.
Personas
Based on field research and real people, two personas was created with focus on user goals, current behavior, and pains points. This personas helped guide the design, sum up data and avoiding the elastic user and self—referential design.
As a developer, Brian likes open source oriented and share knowledge with developers. He is looking to keep track of his work and be matched with other developers who share same interests. He wants to find a mentor and build his own network.
As a software engineer, Ellen likes to share knowledge and collaborate with others developers projects. She expects to see the experience of others developers in order to assess their skill and establish trustful collaboration.
Wireframing & Prototyping
We learned with the user experience of the existing site through diary studies and observation and got current user feedback from hakka labs and the what we found through user research, feedback and insights. Powered by the research, we were ready to start designing low fidelity wireframes, conduct usability testing, determine the basic functionality of layout and the results were very informative. We took this focus into low fidelity wireframes and then conducted usability testing to determine the basic functionality of layout and the results were very informative.
USABILITY TEST
Participants were able to navigate and complete tasks. However, there was considerable hesitation at the beginning of task. This led us to inspect the design more closely and pin point significant problem points.
Participant behaviors revealed:
1 Instructions were not effective and did not attract attention
2 Isolated location of Matchbot went against expectations
2 The dual function of the side panel was not readily understood
USER TEST TAKEAWAYS
We wanted our user experience to feel seamless and readily understood so we rethought the design and instructions. The changes included an interactive on-boarding tour
1 Navigation of Engineer Matching to be “Log”, “Chat” and “Profile”
2 Make Matchbot accessible from any location on side panel "Matches"
3 Consolidate “suggested” and “matches” under one listing, “Matches” in side panel
4 Matchbot provides instructions to matches and tips
prototype
Usability testing with these changes showed increased understanding and ease of navigation. To see the on-boarding tour and meet Matchbot