Experiment design · Creative direction
A smaller header. More room to shop.
A focused layout experiment exploring whether a shorter header could bring products and key messages into view sooner.
UX research · Academic concept
Rutgers Connect: UX research for student collaboration
Rutgers Connect explored a social product for students who wanted to turn ideas into shared projects. As part of a five-person team in the Rutgers UX Design program, I helped investigate the problem and develop a concept around creating, connecting and managing collaborative work.
The project at a glance
Project overview
Who it is for
Students looking for collaborators across campuses and disciplines.
The design focus
Make it easier to move from a promising idea to a shared project with the right people.
What the work includes
An academic product concept, research materials, user journeys, and a conceptual prototype.
Understand the barriers to collaboration
The assignment focused on a university community separated by campuses, departments and areas of study. We treated the need for a mobile collaboration product as a hypothesis and explored how people already found project partners, what motivated participation and where existing tools fell short.
- Contextual inquiry questions grounded in current collaboration habits
- Personas representing different needs and connections to the university
- Short-term collaboration goals and longer-term community opportunities
Make the journey visible
We sketched individually, shared feedback and refined ideas in smaller groups before choosing a direction. Journey maps followed two personas from an initial idea through invitations, coordination and project completion, giving the team a shared view of the experience.
Test the concept before adding detail
Early usability work examined the core idea, home-page navigation, features and information architecture with people from several backgrounds. The team then refined a conceptual prototype and presented its process to classmates and instructors. This was an academic proposal, not a commissioned or launched Rutgers service.
The connection to my practice
What this work demonstrates
This project shows how I connect research to product structure. The team used collaboration needs to shape discovery, invitations, and project coordination before refining the interface.
- UX research
- Personas
- Journey mapping
- Prototyping
Explore the original work
Design details & project materials
Original project materials reflect the product interfaces and brand guidelines at the time. This overview describes my design contribution; it does not claim unreported business or conversion results.
Continue exploring
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