June 2022
Networking App
My Role
Lead UX/UI Designer
Skills Used
Ideation, IA, UI Design, Visual Design
Our team was tasked to design and build a mobile app to facilitate networking at a PepsiCo leadership conference.
The Backstory
The event was a multi-day conference for the top 200+ executives at PepsiCo. There was a healthy percentage of those attendees that were relatively new to the company. So as a way of incentivizing networking the organizers were planning on handing out paper attendee lists with contact info so that as people met each other they could check off that name. The director of my team learned of this and offered up our services to digitize the process. After working backward from the event date, and accounting for development and deployment time, we were left with about two weeks to establish requirements, create the design, and get approvals.
Challenges
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How to incentivize people to use the app and make network connections?
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Loose requirements
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Extremely short deadline
Design
After working backward from the event date, and accounting for development and deployment time, we were left with about two weeks to establish requirements, create the design, and get approvals. We had one or two brainstorming sessions to establish possible requirements. We reviewed the list with the client and they helped establish the must haves vs. the nice to haves vs the not required items. I led the UI design effort and was assisted by one other Jr. UI designer from my team. Some key features of the app were:
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Dynamic announcements managed by the event organizers through a CMS
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A editable profile screen for each attendee
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The ability to search for an attendee by name
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A personalized network page with connected and not connected attendee lists
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The ability to make a connection request
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In app connection request notifications
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Personalized photo gallery
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Dynamic leaderboard
Below are static screen mockups:
Click to enlarge
Conclusion
Due to the short timeframe the end solution was a progressive web app rather than a native app. The app performed well and was a big hit at the event. The client received positive feedback from attendees and the usage metrics were higher than expected. Our team received kudos from the Global CIO and the SVP & Global Chief Technology Officer in a global town hall.