Redefining how tech and innovation companies connect with each other and discover up and coming talented designers.

Context

The growing tech and innovation community of Delft, SmartMakers, wishes to bring large companies, start-ups, leading designers and graduating students based in the city closer together, in order to strengthen their community as one of the leading hubs of innovation in the world.

Problem

With such a variety of stakeholders, each desiring different things from one another, there is no current way to incentivize them to come together or even cross paths outside of rare conventions.

Objective

Understand what each stakeholder (company, designer, student) is looking for in one another and conceptualise and design a suitable way for them to exchange these in a meaningful way.

The Concept:

With a focus on students, our collaborative hackathon offers an innovative event platform and space that brings together diverse teams of students and professionals in a hackathon-style competition. By participating, students gain hands-on experience, expand their professional networks and discover new career prospects within an engaging and collaborative environment.

Empathise

We were missing an understanding of the needs of each stakeholder and how to effectively incentivize them to engage with one another

> What are the pain points?

> What are their needs?

> What are their wants?

To better empathise with our users we engaged in an intensive research and empathising sprint

1. User Stories to contextualise our sprints

2. Personas and User Journey Map

3. Competitor Analysis

User Stories:

> As this university assignment was in large part focused on getting a practical introduction to agile collaboration, specifically the scrum method, we focused heavily on creating a variety of well defined user stories

> Defined our key users: Companies, Designers and Students

Personas and User Journey Map

> Companies are looking for better ways to find new designers with fresh perspectives

> Students desire practical experiences, and more exposure to current designers and potential mentors/employers

> Designers are looking for both aspects; promising designers for their own teams, learning experiences and the ability to network with other companies

Conceptualise and Design

The Bloom.Tech Hub concept is a physical space in Delft which all stakeholders, from high-level designers to budding students, can use to work on their projects. This space also houses the Hackathon Events and Competitions that encourage cross-maturity and cross-discipline collaboration and networking.

As a Hub it provides many other functions useful to tech programmers, designers and researchers. From participant gathering, equipment renting, coworking/meeting spaces as well as food and drink.

Visualising the Hub:

Designing for Engagement:

How might we make the events system more personal, fun and engaging?

How could we put the decision of the event topics in the hands of users?

How can we additionally reward users for achieving in the events?

User Submitted Event Prompts

Directly allowing users to create the pool of potential event topics.

User Prompt Auction

Rewarding consistent and well performing users with more sway in the final event topic choice.

Profile, Badges and Levels

Granting quickly visible levels and achievements on user profiles to boost networking ability within the community.

The token icon, level icons and badges were all personally designed on illustrator.

Level Icons

Badges

My Personal Contributions

Visual Design | Brand Identity

On top of being involved with the overall UX/UI with the rest of the group, conceptualising and prototyping during the different stages of the project, I was the primary Visual and Brand Designer.

Additionally, I was the sole Graphic Designer, creating not only the above iconography (token, badges, level icons) but the brand identity, logo, style guide and first mockup which dictated the visual style of the entirety of the project.