Networky
Find your targeted connection by one-click.
An AI-enabled product for professional event planning, contact management & warm intros
TL;DR
📲 Product
Industry: Technology
Phase: 0-to-1 Product
Type: Web & Mobile App
Status: Launching in Sep. 2023
📽️ Project
Duration: 8 weeks
Type: Professional | Internship
Team:
Product Manager
Product Designer (😃Me)
Reseacher (😃Me)
Content Designer
🏋🏻♀️ My Contribution
Primary Market Research
Competitive Analysis
UX Audit
User Interviews
Prototyping & Testing
UI Redesign
🎯 Goals
Project Goal:
Map out potential seed users & key features that set Network apart from its competitors
Roadmap for future development
Design Goal:
Design self-explanatory flows of several AI-enabled features
🎉 Impacts
Way of working - Established an integrated UX design documentation & methodology tailored for decisionn making in start-up scenarios
Development - My insights delivery helped the Team steer its development direction in case of reinventing wheels
Jump to Results
To an introvert - it is a life-changing internship after I interviewed people who usually interview me.
Background
Maybe you have heard of the Six Handshake Rule - people can find their targeted connection through five connections in between.
But in reality, finding the five right connections can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Whether you're at a massive professional event or simply navigating your career, the challenge remains the same.
Event Organizers
Organizers face a deluge of referral requests, making it difficult to keep track and facilitate meaningful connections at scale.
Networking Pursuers
Effective networking takes time, especially in cold outreach scenarios. Timing follow-ups is a constant struggle.
Event Attendees
Large events promise opportunities but often start with random conversations, consuming precious time.
Super Connectors
For those bridging connections, manual matchmaking feels limited when you have a treasure trove of talents to connect.
Problems & Goals
When I joined Networky, an ambitious project in its infancy, I faced a multitude of features in need of usability testing and validation.
Our challenge was to define priorities and chart the course for long-term development, including questions like:
Should the product serve a vertical market or general market?
Should we serve all sorts of people as users or make the persona more specific?
…
Project Goals
Identify potential seed users who would benefit most from Networky's features.
Define key features that would distinguish Networky from its competitors.
Develop a roadmap to guide our future endeavors.
Design Goals
Create self-explanatory user flows for several AI-enabled features, primed for future use.
Enhance existing user interfaces to optimize user experiences.
My Process & Strategies
This project predominantly revolved around research, prototyping, and rigorous testing for a holistic understanding of our users' needs and preferences, while achieving pixel-perfect UI design wasn't our primary objective.
Prepare
As the first UX-focused team member scattered across the globe, I initiated the development of a comprehensive UX research and testing plan. Our aim was to address various challenges:
Maintaining the evolution of our research and testing goals while ensuring cohesiveness.
Efficiently recruiting a minimal number of participants while extracting rich insights.
Quantifying qualitative data to draw meaningful conclusions.
Research
1) Survey Design
I delved into the factors that might influence user behavior, including age, networking roles, professions, and personalities, and refined our survey questions to encourage respondents to share their real-life experiences rather than theoretical scenarios.
2) Primary Market Research (PMR) & Competitive Analysis
I majorly researched Intros and Luma, two products that covers as many features under the topic of event planning, and matchmaking respectively.
The pivotal point came after I delivered the results of an overall study of Luma’s features, userflows and UIs, which made the Team realize we should not reinvent a wheel which is already well created by another team.
3) 1st round of mock-up testing & Interviews
Based on a paradigm of user testing (5 people a group) by Norman Group, I planned for 12+ interviewees into 4 groups with 3 people in each group, hoping to test with different features so that we could steer direction and iterate if needed.
The first group was required to test seven event planning & contact management-related features, most of which are developed:
1) Host-RSVP; 2) Host- auto questionnaire; 3) Host-auto outreach message; 4) Host-managing contact list; 5) Host-1-click guest invites; 6) Guest-Sign-up’ 7) Guest-AI matchmaking.
The methods I used involve:
Think Out Loud - Asking interviewees to speak up their mind when taking specific actions
Preference & Performance Data - Mark quotes that show strong behavioral emotions like “frustrated”,”excited” as Preference data, while mark the time of interviewee’s pause, actions that took longer time than planned and other observable actions by them as Performance Data.
Interestingly, this group showed a stronger interest in the AI matchmaking feature, highlighting Luma as a solution for their other needs. Nonetheless, I gathered in-depth insights to uplevel the current user flow. This led to a priority sheet for our development team's long-term guidance:
4) 2nd round of mock-up testing & Interviews
After the second round of interviews, we enlisted over 10 participants representing a wide range of ages, professional backgrounds, and social statuses for further mock-up testing.
This round focused on AI matchmaking and warm introduction features, with an increased emphasis on network building instead of event planning. Test scenarios included:
Networking through a super connector/referral.
Self-networking using Networky.
Acting as a super connector themselves.
Quite opposite to my expectation, during scenarios 1 and 2, interviewees did not express strong enthusiasm for AI-enabled matchmaking. They emphasized the importance of a human touch in these features, regardless of the technological advancements. Consequently, I implemented significant changes for Round 2 testing:
Allow More Time for Trust Building:
Delay the request for email and name information until users receive their first set of matching results.
Enhance the welcoming page with a more humanistic tone from the super-connector, testimonials, brand endorsements, video introductions, and other persuasive elements.
In the warm introduction email, provide a more comprehensive response to the question "why you are great matches" rather than simply listing matching facts.
Streamline Onboarding Steps:
Design one-click options instead of requiring text input.
If text input is necessary, offer clear examples to guide users.
Increase the "Cost" to Encourage Completion:
Raise the perceived effort required to motivate users to complete more onboarding steps.
Analysis & results
my process for drawing insights involves:
Roses·
Thorns·Buds
Labeling each raw quote and affinitize similar topics after several rounds
Persona & Journey Map
Upon four determinants drawn from the interviews (i.e., Age, Role in networking, Personality and Professions)
Brainstorming
Upon the model if Environment-Interaction-Humanity-Service-Technology.
Tech Priority Matrix
To map out the significant and less-tech-heavy solutions
Desirability·
Feasibility·
Viability
As a mutually supplementary analysis for Tech Priority Matrix
Key Process Showcase 1 - Roses · Thorns · Buds
A structured approach to analysis led to over 20 insights, which were subsequently condensed into 14 high-level findings.
Key Process Showcase 2 - Mapping out persona
At first the Team was bombarded with bunches of factors that might affect the persona.There was a time the Team narrowly ended up making up one very general persona without any in-depth reasoning.
Very fortunately, based on the insights, it became very much clearer that there were two personas with sufficient validated data to tell them from one another, while both of them share some commonalities as well:
Parts hightlighted in red - Insights that differ a lot among different groups of people
Insights marked by a star - Insights drawn from the relevant groups of people
The results suggested the four factors be weighed with priority (The interviews concerning age & personality dive-in was not rich enough, so the two factors could only fall supplementary to the other two.)
1st - role in networking
This factor brings more diversity than other factors, in terms of rewarding systems, credibility building and outreach in networking.
2nd -profession
Being a founder or investor varies very much in payment systems understanding, outreach and goal setting.
3rd - age
Gen Z & Millennials group could be integrated as opposed to Gen X;
Gen X are more goal-oriented and cares about ROI in terms of networking.
4th - personality
Introverts/Ambiverts hardly mention tipping concept;
Outreach is especially an issue for them
Final results
Finally, the roadmap shows six topics that the Team should emphasize as below：
A personal into page available with dynamic modules (like LinkTree);
Better contact managment, like a mini "Hubspot";
Natural karma point system;
Multimedia profile enhancement;
Prompts to promote long-term matching engagement
AI-enabled follow-ups
Discussion
to engage people, To what extent should we disclose the matching results?
Previously, the flow was designed to disclose only one matching result and people were nudged to register to see the complete three matching results. It turned out to be risky in our interview - people felt insecured to take actions too soon.
Learning from a seasoned Big Tech product designer during the interview, I tweaked the user flow to provide users with more matching results (strong sense of generosity by the app) and immediate connections. This approach cultivates a sense of credibility and abundance, and prevent people to say "No" too early. This flow is scheduled to be tested after the Launch Day.
What i could have done better…
UX wise - Asking Awkward Questions with a Dash of Humor
When it comes to delicate topics like pricing or ratings, people tend to put on a fabulous show or try to win over interviewers. This often results in inflated ratings or reluctance to be brutally honest about what they say.
My secret sauce, inspired by a UX podcast, is to use analogies for rating instead of asking for a specific number (e.g., "How would you rate the value of this feature, compared to a coffee? A dinner? or an iPhone?"). This approach not only eases the pressure of instant decision-making but also makes the decision-making process surprisingly enjoyable.
Product wise - Ditching the Myth of Procedural Justice
One of the most widespread UX myths (even I fell for it initially) is that it's all about following predefined solutions and classical flows.
Reality? It's a delightful zigzag! During my internship, I became a question-tweaking, research-iterating, fast-prototyping ninja.
With emerging tech reshaping UX and products recently, a stronger mindset of resilience or flexibility might help me survive the new game in UX design.
role wise - Becoming a Domain-Hopping Pro
Who knew I'd master AI-enabled logo design during a 2 a.m. design frenzy? I also became a data wizard, squeezing every drop of info into quantifiable data for decision-making in my internship. As we step into the uncharted territory of the new UX and product era, it's imperative to broaden my horizons in marketing, tech, and design, in a smarter way.
Beyond anything - Embracing Positivity & Belief as Superpowers
Call it cliche, but it's the unvarnished truth—positivity is always a game-changer! Interviewing folks from big-tech CXOs to budding Gen-Z entrepreneurs, I discovered:
Everyone, regardless of social status, faces honestly and battles their own supervillains.
High-status interviewees value altruism, a lesson ripe for product design - clear Gives and Takes bond people tighter and build trusts more efficiently.
Facing ambiguity, they radiate positivity, a trait we designers must embody. Beyond processes, our mission is to infuse humanity into every aspect of our creations.
