top of page
Audi next-generation showroom
Concept/Interior design
Audi next-generation showroom
Concept/Interior design
Profortheall
UI/UX Design
00
Design process
I meticulously planned this project with the idea of running a Solo Sprint for four weeks. Through multiple interviews with students, professors, and recruiters, as well as spending a significant amount of time into understanding the system and user's needs, the design concept has been evolved and redesigned specifically for art and design students.
How many art and design schools are in the U.S.?
Number of Liberal Arts Colleges by States
Over
With
With
accredited fine arts
school in the U.S.
MAs, MFAs
Graduating in 2012
BAs, BFAs
Graduating in 2012
01
Identify
Students' school life is intense but splendid and full of variety. They all want to enjoy their valuable time on campus. Most importantly, they want to improve their academic performance for their future career. But, the question is how to meet their needs?
Finding Problem
Question Asked
1. Short-term and long-term goals.
2. Arrange personal/academic schedule.
3. Register for Interested classes.
4. Make new friends.
5. Improve school life.
6. Well-prepared for every assignment.
7. Better academic performance.
8. Make a killer resume and portfolio.
9. prepare for internship/job.
10. Have FUN!
Key Insights
1. Get a good grade and Land a dream job.
2. Be organized.
3. Hard to have sufficient information for each class.
4. Connect with schoolmates.
5. Know the resources available to you
6. Use technology to your advantage.
7. Work with many skilled and experienced people
8. Browse peers' Behance or LinkedIn account as a reference.
9. Contact Alumni and attend the on-site recruiting.
10. Have more free time.
Mind Map
02
Define
Mission Statement
Every art and design student works on their work around the clock dreaming of landing on an ideal job in the future. My service's ultimate goal is to automatically and continuously organize and update students' works and resumes and professionally showcase them, ensuring they efficiently and effortlessly maintain their portfolios and resumes. To facilitate students' interaction and communication, students can freely check and share all public works and profiles.
Art
Design
03
Discover
After mapping out and interviewing the stakeholders, I have found out that students spend most of their time on making connections, finding desired resources, looking for inspirations, working on projects, and preparing portfolios and resumes. I started to research the most common websites and apps they heavily use, such as Instagram, Behance, Google workspace, Slack, and Miro, for their daily life.
Stakeholder
Student
Professor
Recruiter
What tools, apps, and websites do the art and design students use the most?
-
Although Google workspace is heavily used for assignments by design students, students still have to reorganize content for their portfolios.
-
Schools usually require students to upload their final works to school or professors' shared folders. Could those hard-works be displayed in a better way?
-
Students primarily use Linkedin to make professional connections and find a job or internship. Is there any way to make it more relevant to students' needs?
-
Most of the experiences and skills on a student's resume are acquired during their time in school. Is there any way to smartly help students organize their resumes?
Many students use Instagram to define who they are, discover new things, foster relationships with their friends and community, and display their current artworks. It sometimes functions as a social media or a secondary portfolio website.
Despite students often using Behance to look for inspiration and showcase their creative works, they still have to spend a lot of time on reorganizing and redesigning their school projects to update their Behance profile.
Nowadays, Miro and Slack allow schoolmates easy to connect and collaborate. As a part of the designers and artists, many students are willing to share their creative works through Behance, Wix or Instagram. But, interestingly, there is no such platform that can help art and design students to see other schoolmates' artworks.
What do art and design students care about the most?
Make friends
Find a good job
Have fun
Gain teamwork skills
Be an expert
Gain knowledge
04
Create
The gathered feedback from stage 3 allows me to map out customer touchpoints and service blueprints in this stage. Meanwhile, I made a rough sketch and prototype for my audience to test out the current model.
Key Feedback
1. Simple and Clear interface.
2. Want to have more class information
3. Easy to see Students' profiles & works
4. Smartly organize resumes & projects
1
Gather feedback from interviews.
2
Brainstorming
3
Doodle rough solution.
4
Figure out layout and details
Customer Touchpoints
Service Blueprint
05
Evolve
More interviews to test the current prototype and the audiences' latest feedback permit me to find out their pain points and finalize my design approach, which focuses on integrating the existing school academic planning and registration system, Linkedin, and Behance in a simple and intuitive way.
Keep it simple, focus more on smartly organizing and showing works and profile.
Removing the career page can prevent audiences from getting overwhelmed by too many functions.
Persona
Isaiah Williams
Age
Location
Occupation
: 26
: Providence, RI
: Graduate Industrial Design Student
Personality
: Friendly, Social, Active, Passionate,
Determined
Goals
Fina an online, easy-to-use tool that can smartly organize his works and resume and professionally present them.
Expand his social network.
Take more interesting classes.
Frustration
Hard to see other students' works.
Hard to know peers' strengths.
Hard to rapidly access needed resources?
How do I expand my social networks?
How do I improve my academic performance?
What should I do to land a dream job?
Pain Points
My school life is very intense but interesting and due to the tight schedule, I don't have enough time to embellish my resume and portfolio constantly. It would definitely enrich my school life if I could rapidly beautify my works and see other talented students' projects and resumes and help me well prepare for my future career.
I WONDER
SERVICE
CAN
MAKE
OUR
LIVES
EASIER
WHAT
I want to expand my social network!
It is hard to see other talented students' works.
I hope I can access all my desired resources in the first place.
It is exhausting to spend a lot of time embellishing my portfolio and resume.
How can I improve my academic performance?
I want to know my peers' strengths so that I can ask for help to better my school projects.
I have difficulty taking desired courses because the course information is insufficient.
What should I prepare for landing a dream job?
Social
networks
Social
networks
Interesting
classes
Resume &
Portfolio
Other talented
students' Works
Desired
resources
Dream
jobs
Design approach
Based on the users' feedback, the first and foremost requirement is helping them easily update their works and resume. As a current RISD student, I have comprehended that the school requires students to upload resumes and portfolios during the application period, register for classes before a semester begins, and upload their works at the end of a semester. In this circumstance, the school has all students' latest updates, including grades, new skills based on the course contents, and all students' projects. Profortheall will play an important role as an organizer, just like Slideroom, an online platform for schools or other institutions to receive applications, particularly those with digital portfolios, to help students update their in-school online portfolios and resume automatically at the end of a semester.
Student
Blockchain ensures all information is authentic.
AI helps students effortlessly and efficiently organize their work.
Students Upload assignments to
school or professors' website or shared folder.
Student gain knowledge and new skills from various classes.
Assignments uploaded by students will be automatically saved to their personal space.
Profortheall adds new skills to a resume based on class content.
06
Execute
More interviews to test the current prototype and the audiences' latest feedback permit me to find out their pain points and finalize my design approach, which focuses on integrating the existing school academic planning and registration system, Linkedin, and Behance in a simple and intuitive way.
Colour Scheme
Accent Colour
0056FD
Primary Text
1D2A33
Secondary Text
6E6E73
Tertiary Text
ACB3BF
Support Colour
FF6700
Typography
ROBOTO
Weights:
Size:
12, 14, 18, 36
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
, : + - /
Features
Users can easily browse art and design students' public works from various schools.
The discover and people search features allow students to expand their social networks and horizon.
The Resource Search feature allows users to quickly find students with specific skills for help when they have difficulty on a project.
Based on a student's resume, Profortheall will automatically categorize their skill.
The profile page displays the latest updates about a student, including his\her submitted midterm and final works and new skills gained from classes.
The registration system allows students to browse their classmates' information at any time (before a semester begins or during a semester), which can facilitate students' interaction. The past students' projects can be a great reference for students to better understand the course content instead of reading text in the course description., which helps them effectively decide for registering for their interesting courses.
High-Fidelity Prototype
07
Conclusion
Profortheall is a five-week solo project that aims to improve the art and design students' academic experience. As I was working on it, I tried to find and fulfill the students' needs and optimize the user journey, making it feasible for the actual context.
-
Multiple user testing and interviews allow me to realize the importance of accessibility and practicality. All the feedback lead me to develop and visualize all essential features.
-
My first experience with Figma, Miro, and After Effect allowed me to make my project more feasible and complete, including Mind mapping, Blueprint, Research documentation, Wireframing, etc. This valuable experience helped me to become familiar with their tools.
-
Filtering out overwhelming information and a number of features made the project very challenging. But the design process truly helped me to improve my skill and understanding of constructing Information Architecture.
Designer Steve Chang
2021
bottom of page