Building a SaaS Platform to Create Connection and Community
Branches is a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that allows colleges to improve how they connect students with supportive communities.
This product concept was developed to tackle the challenge of social isolation in young people at the HackMentalHealth hackathon.
Background
HackMentalHealth is a non-profit with the mission to:
Foster the leading community of mental health advocates and technologists and enable them to innovate and advance mental health care through technology.
We formed a group at the beginning of the event to tackle the HopeLab Challenge: hacking a solution to address social isolation in young people.
This was the first hackathon for 3 of the 5 members on our team. As individuals, we were really invested in this issue as it spoke to us on a personal level and to people we knew.
Outcome
We designed a scalable SaaS product that can be adopted by any college that needs to improve how students are connected with student organizations & other supportive communities.
We won one of the three Judges’ Recognition Awards out of 61 submissions at the hackathon!
We might be friends now and are thinking about participating in future hackathons together.
Problem
We were tackling the issue of feeling social isolation among college students. This was an issue that we all understood as former & current college students (Hi Lucy, Go Warriors!).
We defined social isolation as the absence of safe space & deep, personal connections.
Sometimes I feel like social isolation isn’t just being lonely, but being with a group of your friends and still feeling like you’re alone.
User & Audience
This is built for students that might have had unconditional and cultural support from where they are from and are struggling to find that deep connection and community when they have moved to college.
Existing Student Organization Search
Student organizations are currently large lists with short descriptions. This can make it difficult for people to see if they fit with these groups.
Approach
Our personalized search allows students to select their Personal Values and see if they match with Member Values that are generated from adding up all the Personal Values of members of the displayed group.
Personal Values
This is an opportunity for people to identify what values they are looking for in the community and what is really important for them on a deep level. Interests are also an opportunity to select more general interests.
Member Values
This is displayed on for students to get a general understanding of what this organization cares about beyond their general description. A hiking club is SFSU can have different member values from a hiking club at Stanford.
Reflection
We enjoyed seeing passions and interests that came together. The weekend was full of meaningful conversation that allowed us to dive into this problem of social isolation in college students, but also what that meant to us as individuals. This definitely just the beginning, but we are excited to see where these insights take us into the future.
Team
We couldn’t have done it without the contributions of everyone. Building great solutions takes input and open collaboration from people if a variety of perspectives!
- Diana Carrasco — Recent Graduate @ UC Berkeley
- Lucy Liu — Mechatronics Engineering @ University of Waterloo
- Jonathan L. Su — Product Designer (Contract) @ Mindstrong Health
- Jose Luis Pacheco — Software Developer@ San Jose/Evergreen C.C.
- Robyn Bautista — UX Designer @ Freelance
Note: Robyn and Jonathan are currently entertaining new design opportunities opportunities! Don’t hesitate to reach out.
Thanks for reading! If you want to learn more about my process or want to discuss this case study? You can read more about me or you can reach me at hey@jonathanlsu.com.
