Hi, I'm Sofia.

My Role

UI/UX designer and Head of Creative Direction: Created new interactions and interface designs for version 1 of app, led overhaul of website design, developed brand design system

Duration

October 2020 - April 2021 (6 months)

Target Market Research

Market research was conducted by referring to studies on travel habits of different demographics, and Millennial and Gen Z travelers aged 17 to 39 were identified as spending the most on travel each year worldwide, at almost $200B each year.

This research also revealed the frustrations that this demographic has in regards to booking trips. They reported that while they find conducting research on a destination before they go important, highly edited images and misleading reviews make this process difficult, as well as not being able to group together reviews, videos, and images into trips on one platform.

Studies on Millennial preferences for apps revealed the following attributes as the most important: unique features and functionality, better design than competitors, celebrity/influencer promotion, and the "braggability" of features.

Design Process

Improving on Preexisting Screens

Building a Task Flow
HOW WILL USERS NAVIGATE THE APP?

Final Solution Mockup

User Testing
TESTING PROTOCOL

Testers: 5 undergraduate students and 2 participants in the 30+ demographic

Assumptions: We made the assumption that users using the app would be experienced with popular apps such as Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter both due to the age group and them having a smartphone.

Tasks: Upload videos, add video to trip upon upload, add video to a trip after upload, successfully search for a city or activity, like a video, view likes, visit video website, find an activity on map view.

Conclusions: Users enjoyed the realistic depiction of travel locations through the use of video, along with the lighthearted aesthetics of the app such as the playful language tone and icons. The most common feedback that we received was the search categories being too broad, and the video length restriction being too short to show a location fully.

Creating Social Media Content
CURATING IMAGES AND CREATING GRAPHICS FOR INSTAGRAM

Building a Brand Guide
BRAND GUIDE SNIPPET

Website Redesign

Project Reflection
BUILDING A DESIGN SYSTEM

My primary takeaway from this project has been the creation of design components that are unique to NaviSavi, as well as ensuring consistency of these components when building a design system. I was able to create components from scratch due to them not being previously established by the company, allowing me to understand the importance of each component in reflecting a company’s desired product.

Project Type

Multidisciplinary design project through the University of Michigan's Multidisciplinary Design Program

The Team

Eugene Yoon (PM), Sean Anggani (front-end), Arun Massand (front-end), Nick McKay (back-end), Calvin Shenk (back-end), Sofia Alidina (UXD), Yan Wang (UXR)

Duration

January 2019 - December 2019 (6 months)

My Role

Visual Designer, UX Designer, UX Researcher

The Problem

Our stakeholder, philanthropic consultancy Mission Throttle, approached our team with the following problem:


How can philanthropic consultancies efficiently facilitate communication between their mission-driven organization clients and the individuals that receive services from these clients (end-users)?


By having an efficient method of data collection to gather feedback from end-users regarding the quality of community services, mission-driven organizations would be able to evaluate and improve their overall impact. This would also allow Mission Throttle to evaluate its impact on mission-driven organization success and obtain needed funding.

Journey Map

Design Overview
CUSTOMIZABLE WEB APPLICATION

Mission Tracker is a customizable web-based application that integrates external communication services (survey - LimeSurvey, text message - Twilio) to collect data that demonstrates mission-driven organizations' impact. This feedback can then enable philanthropic consultancies and mission-driven organizations to obtain future funding and a greater understanding of evolving community needs.

1. Dashboard

The dashboard displays data including program statistics and mission-driven organization outcomes in order to demonstrate the impact of the organizations. This would aid these organizations in quantifying impact in order to obtain further funding.

Final Solution Mockup

Design Process

Who Are the Users?
MISSION THROTTLE CLIENTS

User Research
INTERVIEW OUTCOMES

I collaborated with the researchers in the team to understand our core users, their environment, and major tasks that they were looking to accomplish with our tool. We conducted 5 semi-structured interviews with mission-driven organizations and gathered data on their current workflow and major challenges. This data helped us to pinpoint a solution that would align with their organization goals and level of technical fluency.

Personas

Personas were created using information collected from mission-driven organizations regarding their members' needs and those of end-users.

Tool Flow
BUILDING A MINUMUM VIABLE PRODUCT

Interaction Map
MAPPING THE USER EXPERIENCE

Designing the user experience began from sketching out a typical user journey based on the tasks that they would be completing within the app. Once the user journey had been established, the team began to unpack the design flow for general and specific use cases.

Wireframing
LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

Based on the main features and task flow of our platform, we created initial sketches and wireframes of our prototype. We used Figma as the tool for low-fidelity prototyping the app.

User Testing
TESTING PROTOCOL

We tested our web app with in-person usability tests at 5 mission-driven organizations to determine if users could complete our set of tasks with our written documentation. Administration members working from mission-driven organizations with varying degrees of technical knowledge participated in this test.

Project Reflection
TACKLING PROJECT AMBIGUITY

Our stakeholder approached our team with the broad objective of creating a tool to facilitate communication between its mission-driven organizations and end-users. My primary takeaway from this project was how to utilize an Agile workflow combined with user-centered design strategies to successfully approach a loosely-defined/open-ended project assignment. Through working in small increments and iterating upon our research findings, our team was able to bridge this communication gap and gradually complete our high-level objective.

Project Type

UX research and design internship

My Role

Competitive analysis research, market research, product vision, product pitching, user interviewing and testing

Duration

June 2019 - July 2019 (2 months)

Product Overview

My role as a UX design intern at Pure UX involved conducting the preliminary research necessary for the company to launch and test its new design auditing tool, Pure IQ.

The tool uses AI in order to provide rankings for a website’s design against industry benchmarks and competitors. It also analyzes the quality of UX elements such as imagery, architecture, user flows, and formatting. After this analysis has been conducted, recommendations are generated regarding how a company can proceed with its product roadmap.

UI Sample

Research Tasks

Product Vision Tasks

I was responsible for conceptualizing potential features for the tool based on my above research; our goal was to provide features that stood out against current competitive intelligence tools as well as learn from the offerings of these competitors.

Pitch Deck Design

I was tasked with creating the pitch deck for our tool that was used to acquire beta clients. The deck aided in the onboarding of 15 initial beta clients, providing them with an overview of the tool's features, benefits against competitors, and an overview of design innovation over time. I was also responsible for ensuring that the deck accurately reflected Pure IQ's visual design style and branding.

User Testing
INTERVIEWING & PITCHING TO POTENTIAL BETA CLIENTS

I shared the role with other interns of interviewing potential beta clients regarding their business and design needs, as well as pitching Pure IQ to them using my pitch deck. Interviews were conducted virtually through Zoom.