Building Impact through Network - a Membership Directory Application for University based Incubators
A UX Case Study
I recently lead the research for a UX Design team working for optiMize, an incubator affiliated with the University of Michigan. Our work was to be achieved over a two week sprint. The context was to design what could ultimately become an open source, scalable internal web portal that connects incubator members through a community directory. optiMize envisioned this as the first step towards a three part plan that would include a directory, an organizers’ work interface and donor facing data visualization tool. Our user research validated the need for their vision to come to life.
Our objective was to create a working prototype to be used for testing and development, built modularly with the intent to be mobile responsive, and ready at the end of two weeks to be presented to our client and handed off to developers. The design had to account for practical use cases, be well-researched and validated, and help ensure users that the product is trustworthy and legitimate because the product is thoughtful, meaningful, modern, and highly functional. The basic requirements for this prototype, as dictated by the client in the project brief, were that the user should be able to:
- Sign up and access a community directory of all optiMize members
- Search for community members by their status in the community
- Search for mentors by filtering for certain skills or strength areas
- Access crowdsourced contact information of other community members
- Update their own profiles
- Add, update, or remove themselves from a project
- Search for projects across the entire optiMize history and see details about it
We also had the option to build out a platform within the application for the internal organizers of optiMize challenges to facilitate tracking and project management. Our user research strongly pointed to a need for this ability especially from incubator participants and organizers so we absolutely worked towards building this capacity in our application.
Research
Research Plan
Context: Design challenge to build a Community Directory for Optimize incubator members
Objectives: To connect with users who have been or could be involved with an incubator community directory platform to best understand their needs
Audience: Student and small business incubator participants (applicants, students, fellows, organizers/staff, alumni, mentors, investors)
Locations: Surveys and interviews are with global audiences; interviews to be conducted by phone, in person and using WhatsApp
Methods: Interviews, Surveys, Affinity Maps, Competitive Insights, Synthesis
Schedule: Survey sent on Tues. 7/16;Interviews 7/16–7/20
Outcomes: Trends, User Insights, User Personas, Use Cases, User Journey Maps
We created a screener survey using Google Forms with the intention of securing 15 phone interviews. We pushed the survey through a Facebook sponsored advertisement, emails to contacts from current incubator programs, and our personal networks. Through one personal connection, we were able to connect to users not only across the US, but across the globe who had experiences as students, fellows, mentors, and organizers in various incubator programs connected to universities. We extend a special thanks to the Stanford University Fellows, American University’s Professor Bellows, Red Dirt Studio, Global Sleepover and Arts on the Block for their expertise, enthusiasm and generosity around sharing knowledge and experiences.
79.2% of those who took the survey had been involved with incubators
37.5% were ages 18–25
31.6% were student participants
26.3% were small business owners
15.8% were organizers
We asked these six primary questions over the phone:
- Briefly tell us about your incubator experience and your role
- What are your biggest challenges or roadblocks?
- How do you communicate with team members, mentors, and organizers?
- How would you like to see the communication process improved?
- If there was a home screen for your daily use with the incubator, how would you use it?
- What does it mean to be part of this community?
We found most people were eager to help our research and stayed on the phone much longer than the allocated 10–15 minute timeframe. In these cases, we asked four additional questions:
- What are your goals?
- How do you benchmark your progress?
- How do you ask for help or gain access to resources?
- Why did you join?
Key Findings
During the interview process, we found very strong consensus from the interviewees around several values, challenges, and opportunities. These broadly included network, people, growth, funding/resources, efficiency, access, accountability, transparency, and communication.
Overwhelmingly, student participants emphasized the greatest value being the network they built as well as well as their personal and professional growth.
“I would never have had the opportunity to get in front of these people. I spoke to very prominent people, CEOs and executives.” Stanford University Innovation Fellow, Winner of seed funding from Zahn Innovation Center’s incubator at City University of New York
Student startups and small business owners alike described the need for project management tools so as to be able to track customizable goals.
“Endemic in entrepreneurial community is a lot of talk, idealism, buzz words and cute white-boarding but execution is lacking. I want to see my own to-do list, what has been completed so far so you have an idea of project timeline, macro and micro personal benchmarks and the ability to lay out benchmarks on a timeline.” Stanford University Innovation Fellow, Participant Binghamton University Incubator, Volunteer Koffman Southern Tier Incubator, Startup business owner
Participants and mentors described challenges when appropriate resources were not made accessible. This is especially important for creating equal access for marginalized identities.
“We never got the help we needed from mentors. Our team fell apart from bad team dynamics.” Stanford University Fellow, CUNY incubator participant, mentor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Organizers and directors consistently pointed to a need for efficiency solutions and adequate funding. We suspect a strong link between the two. If organizers, staff and mentors can spend less time administering and more time guiding and teaching participants towards success, the byproduct would likely be higher success rates, donor interest, prestige and growth for all stakeholders.
“If we had on boarding to managing and tracking to outputting a report and all the things that happen in between…” Incubator Director at American University in Washington, D.C.
Directors described the chain effect when a student participant experiences success such as acceptance into top graduate programs or winning challenges like CNN’s Hero Award. In 2018, American University senior Maria Rose Belding was named one of CNN’s Hero’s for her work tackling food waste and hunger simultaneously with the Means Database. Director Bellows explains such successes as boosting the entire community by bringing prestige recognition and visibility.
Meet the Users and Problem Statement
Anna G and Leslie O are the user personas which were born from our research. Anna is an incubator participant and Leslie is an organizer. They intersect around the following user problem.
Anna G. needs help with data visualization for her project but she doesn’t know where to find a mentor with expertise in that area.
The Hypothesis
At its core, our optiMize application provides a means for all members of the community to connect. By creating paths to seamless connection, users can obtain access to resources in their mentors and organizers as well as fellow participants. When scaled up, the feature allows reach to a wider net of audiences. This is the first step in a series of recommended efficiency solutions that meet the needs of both participants and organizers alike.
The second portion of our hypothesis speaks to building greater efficiency systems in an effort to increase accountability within teams, tracking of progress, and ultimately productivity and potential for funding. The system is hinged around a dashboard feature of customizable widgets built out of project tracking tools. Our early MVP hints at these features with the dashboard intended for scaling up.
Ideation
At the end of our first week, we brought each of our personal insights together in a rapid design studio. This was a timed exercise where we each had five minutes to sketch 6–8 wireframes addressing a certain problem. This happened four times, back to back, and provided us a no-holds-barred way to collaborate. During the last round of the studio, we took a little extra time and mapped out a solution by fusing together the best ideas each person had. Not only was this crucial for the development of our product, but it also was a powerful tool for building buy-in from each designer.
Since we were each ideating rapidly throughout the process and were working a very tight turnaround, white boarding exercises like MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t Have) helped us prioritize what features we would include in our minimum viable product and understand what we needed to include on each page.
Prototyping
We created paper prototypes to test how users moved through the basic flows required to accomplish their goals. We iterated three times and tested each set with 3–5 testers. From the first iteration, we learned that giving the users too many icons confused them. As a result, we simplified the icons and link placement. User testing indicated the dashboard functionality was not coming across as intended. Testers did not intuitively know how to use the dashboard icon and did not understand how it could improve efficiency/productivity. The sign up introduction and on-boarding demo were incorporated based on these rounds of tests.
Mid Fidelity Prototyping in Axure
Using Axure software, we created mid fidelity wireframes to allow users to interact with the directory and dashboard. Users landed on a splash page where they could sign up or sign in. Next they identified their role (participant, mentor, alumni, fellow or organizer) and set up their profile pages with options to return at a later time to edit and update non-essential details.
Working off of a test plan, we conducted usability tests in order to gauge the heuristics of the application, especially around the dashboard feature. Was it familiar enough to be friendly? Could users easily sign up, build and modify a profile page and connect to a network of mentors and other participants? The third iteration lead to some great results — testers not only accomplished required functionality but also understood how the dashboard could be used based on role/tasks.
With on-boarding introduction, users learned to visit the members page in order to search for mentors based on skills and strengths. In order to see this feature fully realized, we recommend facilitating more research into how participants would best like to initiate working with a new mentor. Would this be initiating a conversation or inviting them to collaborate or scheduling time during open hours?
Best Practices for Access and Inclusivity
Our membership directory is aimed at increasing ease for all users to build their network and obtain needed resources. To be fully utilized, members would identify their weaknesses during profile and project build pages. However, we learned that a deeper audience awareness must be explored in order to be fully inclusive of all identities. One organizer with expertise from their work at Code2040 spoke to a need for participants to be able to request resources safely and perhaps not publicly. We had been working with an assumption that broadcasting project needs would be the best way to connect users to appropriate mentors. We strongly recommend secondary research within marginalized identity groups to be sure we are designing for the inclusion of all users.
Summary
At the two week mark, we achieved our product demo for optiMize and provided a product roadmap, sitemap and handoff documents. Our clickable prototype MVP demonstrates a straightforward path for members to sign up and achieve core functionality of the use cases outlined in the client brief. Within just a few clicks, participants can reach out to community members and begin to build their network, the biggest self-described win.
It also sets the stage for the second and third tier scaled advancements via the dashboard feature. The Dashboard answers the call from participants and organizers for an at-a-glance screenshot of progress, be that per project or across cohorts.
It is our hypothesis 3.0 that if organizers and participants have tools for tracking progress and managing projects and cohorts, they are freed up to do their highest level work- nurturing innovation. The reports which could be generated by integrated management tools provide the data feed for optiMize’s final and big win: the data visualization feature.
In closing, our early work with the community directory sets the foundation on which to address the number one challenge for startups and incubators alike, the funding challenge. We propose that a solution may lay within outward facing data visualization of social impact as it connects to place. Our research with placemaking expert and Arts on the Block director, Anne L’Ecuyer pointed to the trend amongst funding streams. Impact as it relates to location is what drives funding today.
