RESEARCH BRIEF

As globalization increases and the number of international students in the US continue to grow, there is a need for them to adapt and feel a sense of belonging in a new country, away from home.

PROCESS

The project kick-started with a thorough market analysis to find an opportunity space for a new business. This was followed by identifying the user groups, conducting ethnographic research, analyzing the data, defining the user needs, competitor research, prototyping the user experience, brand development and finally creating a business strategy.

OUTCOME

Ripple is a university-specific knowledge sharing platform that helps international students gain access to a pool of answers and connects them to a community of students who help each other by sharing their experiences.

MY ROLE

As a part of an excellent team who contributed equally for the project’s success, I took a project lead role where I contributed my efforts into not just conducting research, ideating and implementing strategies but also managing the team and facilitating conversations throughout the process. I worked on the visual language of the brand, copy writing for the purpose of documentation and designed the user interfaces of our final prototype as well.

The following page highlights a few sections of the project. To view the detailed process, please scroll to the bottom of the page.

RESEARCH

MIND MAP

We started the process by listing various industries and/or concepts we were interested to delve into for the course of this project. These topics were a result of trends research we conducted online. The selected ones are highlighted in pink.

MARKET ANALYSIS

We selected three concepts and further identified their market opportunities using tools such as 2x2 matrix, SWOT, Porter’s 5 forces, stakeholder maps. Finally, one industry was selected using a decision matrix.

SELECTED INDUSTRY

Through our market analysis and selection process we decided to move on with ‘acculturation for immigrants’ as our subject of study. Based on our research we realized this industry has low competition, low entry barriers and high market opportunity.

As we continued with our secondary research within the selected industry and prepared for primary research, we stated our problem and opportunity statement to help us focus our research and uncover actual user needs.

ANALYSIS & SYNTHESIS

With our project brief in place, we moved on with the project and conducted primary user research, followed by data analysis and synthesis in the form of empathy maps, personas, journey maps (a few of which are displayed below) and design criteria. This was followed by analyzing competitors who fulfilled the criteria we defined for our offering.

BUSINESS STRATEGY

Using our key insights from the research we developed a business plan for a product/service that would fulfill the core user needs. To define a strategy for our business, we used tools such as Value Proposition Map, Business Model Canvas, ZAG 17 Questions, SWOT Analysis and ABCQ approach.

OUTCOME

Through several group brainstorming sessions we were able to align the stated user needs with a product offering called Ripple. Before we created our final prototype, we created several scenarios and storyboarded the use of the app. The high-fidelity prototype is displayed below.

To view the detailed process for the UX design of the app, please click here.