skysthelimit.org
Business Development Tools & Resources
A digital platform, toolkit, and additional resources aimed at connecting young, underrepresented, entrepreneurs with the opportunities needed to build thriving businesses.
CLIENT
skysthelimit.org
TIMELINE
60 weeks
PROJECT TYPE
Research, Rebranding, Strategy, UX, Service, Visual & Interaction Design, Mobile & Responsive web
MY ROLE
Product designer
CORE TEAM
Allison Bouganim, Product Designer: 1/2018 - 3/2019
Tiffany Yang, Design Lead: 6/2017 - 6/2018
Tony Contreras, Product Owner: 6/2018 - 6/2019
About skysthelimit.org
Skysthelimit.org is a digital platform that connects aspiring underrepresented entrepreneurs, ages 18 to 29, with experienced business advisors and mentors. They also license their mentoring platform to nonprofits and other organizations worldwide to support the scale of their business mentoring programs.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
60% of Black and Hispanic millennials wanted to pursue entrepreneurship. However, nearly 20% of those state the lack of representation as a considerable barrier to success. All business owners should have equal access to opportunity, representation, tools, and networks, regardless of zip code or environment.
OPPORTUNITY:
All business owners should have equal access to opportunity, representation, tools, and networks, regardless of zip code or environment.
WHAT IS OUR OBJECTIVE?
This product aims to answer the question: How might we best support under-represented entrepreneurs, regardless of location, and democratize the network, tools, and opportunities needed to build thriving businesses?
DELIVERY:
We transformed the initial MVP of this idea into a digital platform that connects entrepreneurs with mentors, shares access to business resources and toolkits, and offers them a funding opportunity. We translated our findings into a responsive web platform, including designs suitable for iOS apps backlogged for future development. We also used data and research to change the mechanics of matching.
My Role
I transitioned from a two-person team to becoming the only designer on this project within six months of my initial role-on date. I was responsible for redesigning existing features on the platform and creating new features that met and anticipated the users' needs while satisfying client requirements.
I was responsible for conducting user research, validating and testing features, mobile and responsive web designs, annotating designs, working directly with the development team, and creating and maintaining the design language system. Tasks vary depending on features and project needs.
Design Process
Agile & Scrum, 3 week design sprints.
Design
Empathize: User interviews & Secondary research based on desk research and utilizing the data existing in the system.
Ideate: Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas
Prototype: Start to Create Solutions
Test: Testing the solutions
Deliver: Handing off high-fidelity visual design comps, and annotations, to developers
Stakeholders
- Meetings every month to align on the features we wanted to build and adjust the roadmap and priority
- Weekly co-creation sessions with the client to review designs and discuss opportunities to improve the customer experience
Developers
- Daily stand up
- Once we worked with the clients, we would then add features and designs to our Jira Backlog
- The design team was always 2 sprints ahead of the dev team
- 2-week sprints and then 1 week to dedicate to redesigning existing features based on user feedback (inspect and adapt)
Moodboards
Global Product
Flexible and Robust toolbox
As mentioned, my design role was characterized as “Hybrid”. For 36 weeks of this project I was the only designer on the team, so my role varied depending on the current sprint needs. At some point throughout, I was the Service & Interaction Designer, Visual Designer, User Researcher and Strategist. For that reason, I needed a flexible and robust toolkit to pull from.
Tools
Sketchapp, Invision (Freehand), Jira, Anima Toolkit, Abstract, Adobe Suite, Zeplin, Asana, Proto.io, Craft by Invision
Skills
Annotating Designs for a remote development team, Storytelling, User Interviews, Facilitating client and stakeholder meetings, Rapid Prototyping, Wireframing, ranslating user needs into product features, Problem-Solving, Agile sprints
