There are a lack of virtual spaces for people interested in side projects, both professionally and personally, as they struggle to find resources and connect with others.
How might we...
...design a platform that helps people interested in side projects find and implement their ideas, while facilitating project ideation and connection amongst the community?
Our solution
ProjectPals is a website that uses AI to generate side project ideas, provide resources, and connects users with like-minded individuals to collaborate on their side projects!
of tech employees have started a new side project.
However,
>50%
of projects remain incomplete or fail.
So... why was this happening? We wanted to understand why so many projects encountered obstacles leading to incompletion or failure, identify the most common factors contributing to this failure, and explore more qualitative aspects that influence users in this regard. Thus, we conducted user interviews.
Research
User Interviews
We conducted 4 user interviews to gain some more insight, and identified their pain points, motivations, and behaviours. We made sure to interview those who had completed at least one side project. Here were some of the questions that we asked:
How many side projects have you begun? Have many of those have you finished?
Where did you find or how did you come up with your side project? Was it difficult to find?
Why do you do side projects? If you did it for a job, did it help you get/succeed in your job?
What keeps you motivated during a side project?
What challenges did you experience when finding your side project?
What would you have done differently?
Do you prefer working on a side-project solo or in a group?
Based on these questions, we compiled their motivations, behaviours, and pain points onto an affinity map.
Analysis
Themes and Insights
After compiling our pain points, motivations, and behaviours, we were able to categorize them into 3 main themes:
1. Ideation
People struggled to find or implement ideas.
2. Collaboration
People prefer to work collaboratively with individuals but struggle to find people with similar interests.
3. Interests
People will do side projects that align with their interests and goals.
In the end, we chose to focus on targeting the theme of Ideation, with a secondary focus on Collaboration.
Analysis
User Persona
To further consolidate our findings from the affinity map, we created a user persona to better understand our users' pain points, behaviours, and motivations.
Analysis
Competitive Analysis
In order to better understand the space we were working with, we wanted to see what the platforms on the market looked like when it came to collaboration and project ideation.
There are several platforms such as Pinterest and Dribbble that support lots of project ideation, but lacks collaboration with others. Then there are other platforms like Discord and Reddit, which support high collaboration and communication with others, but with less focus on project ideation.
We noticed that there was a gap in the market for both high collaboration and side project ideation, so we aimed to fill that gap and prioritize those aspects with our platform.
Analysis
User Flow
After thoroughly analyzing our target users / target market and narrowed down what we should be focusing on, we came up with our user flow.
Ideation
Sketches
With some inspiration from job boards and forums, each of us did some brainstorming on what each screen could look like.
Ideation
Wireframing
Finally, we consolidated our ideas together, discussed specific design decisions based on our research, and came up with these wireframes matching our user flow.
Branding
Colour Palette
To determine the colour palette, we came up with a list of adjectives that we wanted to describe our website’s brand image. Since our platform wants to encourage generating ideas and collaborating with others, we came up with the following adjectives:
Based on these adjectives, we created the following colour palette (used against a white background):
In terms of colour injection: Blue was used for the "Ideas" page, and any call-to-action buttons. Orange represented the tag category for frameworks, libraries, languages, and tools. Pink was used for the "Teams" page, and represented the tag category for interests. Yellow was used for the "My Projects" page, and represented the tag category for "other".
Branding
Logo & Fonts
Our logo is a combination of puzzle piece and lightbulb imagery, since they symbolize collaboration and idea generation, respectively.
We primarily used Inter throughout our design, since its modern look fits our target demographic, and since it's sans-serif, it's easy to read and gives a playful vibe.
Finally, after combining our wireframes and our branding in Figma, we came up with this high-fidelity prototype! Below is a walkthrough of our user flow, as a returning user who is seeking ideas to start a new project.
Next Steps
Usability Testing
Due to time constraints, we were unfortunately unable to conduct usability testing. Doing so would allow us to ensure that the flow is intuitive, and we could then iterate on our prototype based on our user feedback.
Community Features
One of the features that we originally wanted to implement was a forum page where users could ask questions about their side projects and others can reply. This would build a more collaborative atmosphere, and encourage more community interaction .
Key Takeaways
User Interviews
This was the first time I had done formal user interviews in person with strangers! We interviewed other students in E7 (the building we were working in) and got to have many insightful conversations with them. Talking to them in-person made me strongly empathize with them and their experiences. After only interviewing 2 people myself, I felt like I understood our user group significantly more than before.
Time and Pacing
Since this was my first time participating in a designathon, I noted the importance of setting a proper timeline and pacing our work sessions accordingly. With such a short time frame to work with, we had to discard many of our original ideas and only prioritized the most important features. This helped us highlight the most important aspects of our project and set a proper direction to follow.
UI Libraries
Prior to this designathon, I had a stubborn habit of always creating everything from scratch -- every button, image, layout, feature. Although making things from scratch creates a good learning opportunity, it is incredibly inefficient and takes time away from more important aspects of design. For this project, my teammates introduced me to some UI Libraries on Figma Community, and designing became much more efficient.
