Projects
Openbook,
UX Designer / Product Manager
Openbook is a project that my group and I submitted to the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Student Design Awards 2019. If you are unfamiliar with the competition, it is explained below and the website is linked above.
"The RSA Student Design Awards is a global curriculum and annual competition for higher education students and recent graduates run by the RSA. Each year the Awards challenge emerging designers to tackle a range of design briefs focused on pressing social, environmental and economic issues.
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We work closely with industry partners to develop the briefs, we help colleges and universities embed them in their curricula, and we support participants through workshops and mentoring. Winners are rewarded with cash prizes, paid industry placements, complementary RSA Fellowships and a range of other benefits to kick-start their careers. The competition has helped identify solutions and talent that have had a huge impact in the world."
Our group decided to tackle Brief 5: Alone Together: Accounting for how different groups in society are affected by loneliness, design a way to reduce its impact on one or more of the following: physical health, mental health, or access to services.
Openbook is an online forum tied to individual Universities that allow students to anonymously post their stories and experiences, so that another student may read their post and relate to it, and give them a sense that they aren't alone. This reverses the current process of lonely students lining up at the schools counselling office with absurd wait times, by allowing students to realize that other students are more like them than they think and they aren't the only ones feeling those emotions. Shy students who didn't want to step out and make the first move towards a counsellor now don't have to, because counsellors are on the forum and can reach out to the student instead if they feel it is necessary.
Ending the stigma is a very difficult task and so we decided to reverse the process, in hopes that the stigma would open up.
My job within the group was to make sure our product or solution always had great user experience because anything short of that wouldn't be good enough. I also ideated and made sure our ideas would be sustainable and practical. I came to the conclusion that Openbook would best be sold to universities as a yearly subscription because currently universities already subscribe to similar online platforms for students such as imLeagues for intramurals and LEARN by D2L as a Learning Management System. Universities are looking for ways to reduce mental illness on their campuses and I believe they would have no issue trying our platform and seeing the results would give them reason to renew their subscription. I made sure that our product was realistic and practical all the way through ideation to the prototyping stage. I worked with our researchers, designers, and developers to make sure our product was on track to be complete by the deadline and to make sure that our product was consistent all throughout the process.
You can view our submission below.
uRide,
UX Designer / Project Manager
uRide is a solution that solves carpooling for students. the uRide team was composed of myself and two peers who also attended the Stratford School of Interaction Design. Living in Waterloo, we realised that students rely on just a Facebook group to coordinate carpooling themselves to class in Stratford, as well as going home on weekends or holidays.
This solution is a platform that allows both riders and drivers to use to connect with each other, and differentiates from Uber by having a driver who also needs to go the same destination and does not have to charge money if they don't want to. This platform is more reliable and professional than a dedicated ridesharing Facebook group, and users can facilitate payment, routes, and carpool groups, as well as chat with their potential fellow passengers.
I was the part of the UX design team and was also responsible for the business strategy, ideation, and feasibility of our solution. I often bridged the gap between the content team and my fellow designers on what we should focus most of our time towards and which layouts may work best. Our final deliverables can be viewed with the links below.
GM Marketing Campaign,
Market Research
In this third year project, we were tasked with creating a marketing campaign for a company in the industrial products industry. We chose GM as our company because of our interest in the automotive industry and decided to tackle Chevrolet's truck line.
We created the Chevrolet ZR1, a high-end truck that would rival the Ford Raptor in terms of pricing, looks, and performance.
In this group, I was in charge of the business aspects of our concept, competition and overall feasibility of the vehicle.
Truck purchases were up 7% in 2017 which allowed us to be comfortable creating a new truck in the marketplace. The target market we chose were the weekend warriors, blue collar workers, and anyone else who wants a fully loaded truck with off-roading capabilities
I identified the product goal to be "to create a luxury truck that sells well and increases Chevrolet's overall market share." I also identified our strategy with commercials. Current commercials for cars often show the entire line rather than a standalone, which is why I decided the ZR1 would be marketed under the current line of Chevrolet's trucks along with the Colorado and Silverado.