An app designed to help introverted professionals to communicate confidently and elevate their careers.
Role: UX Researcher and Designer
Team: Individual, with feedback from peers and educators
Tools: Figma, Otter.ai
Duration: 12 weeks (Part-time)
Society undervalues introversion despite introverts making up roughly half of the population.
Especially in the workplace, the ideal worker is portrayed as “one high in extraverted tendencies” whereas introverts are “often overlooked and rarely credited for their gifts”. There are also a lot of misconceptions and biases that introverts face when looking to advance in their careers despite having all the skills needed for the roles. All of these factors can hinder the career development of introverted professionals, ultimately affecting their future career goals and success.
Before moving on to conducting user interviews, I needed to determine:
1. What the research objectives were -To understand the challenges faced by introverted professionals in the workplace
2. What I hoped to learn - To understand and learn how these challenges are affecting their career growth
3. What was the outcome that I wanted to see out of this problem - To find potential solutions to the challenges that are being faced in regards to career growth
Armed with all this information, I crafted an initial HMW Statement to help guide my user interviews
How might we educate introverted professionals between the ages of 23-35, to comfortably initiate conversations with colleagues and clients in the workplace, so that they can advance in their careers and showcase their skills to a wider audience?
I conducted 4 user interviews over zoom, with participants who were between the ages of 23-35 years old, identified as introverted, were employed and were keen on advancing their careers.
The main goal was to understand my participants pain points, motivations and behavior's. The findings from this interview would help determine what the best solution would be.
After interviewing the participants, I found 6 themes that were expressed. However the most re-occurring theme that all my participants had was having trouble communicating with others.
Communicating with others
Communicating with others is hard for introverts as they struggle to start and maintain conversations. This hinders them as they cannot build meaningful connections with colleagues or clients and expand their network.
Based on my new insight from the user interviews I revised my HMW statement to better reflect the issue that was being solved for....
How might we educate introverted professionals between the ages of 23-35, to comfortably initiate conversations with colleagues and clients in the workplace, so that they can advance in their careers and showcase their skills to a wider audience?
Meet Amani. Amani is a persona that has been created based on our user interview pain points and frustrations, to help us empathize better with our users and understand who we are solving for.
I created an experience map as well to help us determine where the best points for opportunity would be.
Based on our persona I authored some user stories and found 4 epics: Learning communication skills, Community Engagement, Mentorship, & Networking.
Out of these 4 epics, Learning communication skills was chosen as it would answer a lot of Amani's pain points and help her achieve her goal of learning to communicate better, as well as practice her communication skills.
As an introverted professional I want to learn about effective conversation starters so that I can approach colleagues and clients more easily.
As an introverted professional I want to read about small talk tips so that I can comfortably engage in casual conversations with colleagues and clients.
As an introverted professional I want to practice what I've learned with a simulated person so that I can feel less intimidated and more free to make mistakes.
As an introverted professional I want to view detailed feedback on my conversational skills from my practices so that I may know what to work and improve on.
As an introverted professional I want to track my communication progress so that I can see how I’m improving and what areas I need to work on.
The task flow shows how Amani would go about learning some communication skills, practicing those learnings and receiving feedback.
Before sketching some screens of what the app would look like, I gathered some inspiration from various apps and websites to help generate ideas.
With my sketches done, I converted them to mid-fidelity grayscale wireframes to use for usability tests.
I conducted 2 rounds of user testing to get feedback from our users. I tested the prototypes with a wide range of participants over zoom, slack and in person.
Tasks that the users were asked to perform:
Task #1 - Explore the first screen and tell me what you see
Task #2 - Find an article on conversation starters
Task #3 - Practice what you’ve learned with the AI coach
Task #4 - Reply back to the AI coach with an audio message
Task #5 - End the conversation & view your results
All testers were able to complete all the tasks. I received some suggestions from the users that I then placed on a prioritization matrix to determine which ones would provide the most user value and lowest effort to fix given the time constraint.
With the feedback received I revised my wireframes so that there was better alignment, better descriptions to help guide users and additional features to make the experience as seamless as possible.
The Emerge brand is empowering, educative, optimistic, inclusive and it promotes confidence and growth.
These colors emulate the pastel, bright color and fun aspect that I wanted the app to have.
Five colors were extracted from my mood board with the shade of blue being the main color which you can see throughout the app and in the logo while the accent color are used as pops of color throughout the app.
Poppins was chosen as the font due to it's modern style and readability while Gluten was chosen for the logo due to it's fun style.
Emerge
‘to become known, to come into view’
I chose Emerge as it embodies a lot of the characteristics of the app. It takes a lot of courage and growth to come into view or ‘emerge’ and with this app we hope to encourage users to take those first steps in order to help them thrive in their careers.
I created a marketing website, to promote Emerge to potential users, highlighting it's value and benefits.
I looked into what Emerge would look like on an alternative platform that's different from web & mobile and I decided to create an iPad/tablet high fidelity wireframe of the home screen.
If two friends use your product, how could it enhance or detract from their friendship?
Having two friends use this app would definitely enhance that relationship as they will be able to support, encourage and learn from each other. This app has a community section for this exact purpose.
This app could be a great resource for introverts who are looking for safe spaces and communities. It's a space where introverts can be empowered to confidently navigate communication in highly extraverted environments and excel in their careers despite the biases that still exist.
