I was a part of a team that created a native web app for an internal conference at Cerner. The purpose of the app was for colleagues to network and connect with each other by viewing similar interests. We also built in a truth/dare game into this app as another outlet for employees to interact with each other. This idea started off as a design challenge, but me and a couple of other UX designers decided to invest the time and effort to make this idea come to life. We played different roles, I served more in the IA role, created wire-frames and contributed to the overall high-fidelity design of the product.
UX Design Challenge
In 2017, I entered an internal 24 hour design challenge with 4 other UX designers. We were to solve any problem using emerging technology. As a team, we wanted to solve the lack of face to face engagement with others. We thought about the many experiences we had trying to muster up the courage to network/chat/begin a conversation with someone new. So we ideated as a team and came up with a solution:
The app would use AI, Social Media, Augmented Reality
AI scans Social Media Network to find commonalities with you and other people in your immediate area.
Suggests conversation topics for you and the other person
Suggests interesting conversations nearby
Personas
I created Personas based off of users that we observed and interviewed within our office, since they would be the users using the app during the conference.
Information Architecture
I created an Information Architecture for our team to understand the structure and navigation of the native web app.
Project Planning
After the design challenge was over, we decided to take this idea and make it into reality. We did some evangelizing to get developers involved and also influenced the leadership team for our internal conference "DevCon" to allow us to demo our beta app. We were a small team, so we wore many hats and played a part in every step of the process.
Since DevCon would be coming up in less than 2 months, we had to prioritize our work. Trying to incorporate AI and Augmented Reality would be too tall of an order. So we built what would be the foundation of this app to get us started. We didn't want users to have to do much work to use this app, so we leveraged employees log in information. By leveraging users Microsoft log in info, users did not have to create a new user name, password, etc. Other features included in the Beta were Adding Interests, viewing interest matches from other users, searching a person through their code/name and a truth or dare game.
Wire-frames
High-Fidelity UI
Beta
We launched our Beta App during DevCon. Feedback and statistics were important to us, so we made sure to add in data analytics. We also sent out a survey after the event to get a sense of how users perceived "DevConnect". Below are some of the analytics that were capture:
132 people logged on to the app
88 entered interests
43 did at least one truth or dare
280 unique users were viewed a total of 4171 times
We served 15760 pages, with an average response time of 126ms.
Takeaway
Overall "DevConnect" Beta was a success and we learned a lot from it being in use just for one day. All of the research and data collected, allowed us to plan requirements and features for phase 2!