Femme Tech

Overview

About

In November 2018, I participated Hexagon's Hackathon, HexHacks. The challenge was Promoting Underrepresented Communities In Tech. Me and my teammates were grouped together to build a resource for women that are new to tech to help them discover events and communities within their area. My role was to create the wireframes of the app.

The Focus

Build a resource for women that are new to tech to discover events and communities in their area.

Duration

1 Day (November 3, 2018)

Team Members

Jane Park, Chelsea Casareale, Caroline Lukins, Melissa Alzate, Annemarie Fulcer, Lynn Hwirin Park

My Role

UX Designer: Competitve Analysis, Wireframing

Problem

For women just entering the tech industry, it can be difficult to find a community and the resources needed to succeed. New to the industry, most do not know what exists, where to start, or what terms to search for. Finding relevant and reliable information for women in one streamlined place can be very difficult and frustrating. Most companies are predominantly male-led and this can lead to feelings of intimidation. Ultimately, these issues can lead to the halting of professional growth of the individual, a factor contributing to imbalance of representation.

Problem: Too many separate platforms

Problem: Too many buzzwords

Goal

With an overwhelming array of options, facets, and terms to go to. We try to narrow it down that here should be one hub that women can go to for getting involved.

Research

User Interviews

We conducted informal interviews regarding the difficulty of finding events for women in tech, we came up with a persona to represent our user and her goals. Some of the themes that overlapped were:
  • They know their general interest field, but not the specifics areas they like
  • They need assistance getting involved in their professional community as they pursue their goals

    • User Persona

    After we gathered our data from the interviews, we created a user persona to fit those criterias.

    Concept Design

    Ideating

    The approach is to have the search be more human than a generic search. The user response will be more receptive when the questions and results are phrased in human-like conversations.
  • By Industry? NO → By Something Human
  • By Skills? NO → By Interest
  • By Event Type? NO → By Location
  • By Social Connections? NO → By Date
  • By Company/Event Sponsor? NO → By Industry
  • By Popularity (community sourced)
  • By Audience (size and demographic)
  • By Audience (size and demographic)

    • Search Filters

    We started to brainstorm ideas on search filters, how would the user go about searching for their specific needs?
    Primary Filters
    Location
  • User input with autosearch and gelocation
    • Event Type (motivation)
  • Network
  • Work on my portfolio
  • Learn about industries
  • Develop my skill
  • Find mentorship
    • Perfect for
  • Recent grads
  • Landing first job
  • Working on my skills
  • Building a better portfolio
  • Looking for mentorship
  • Industry deep divind
  • Getting inspired
    • Secondary Filters:
    Skills & Interest
  • Design: UI/UX Design, Visual Design, Graphic Design, Motion Design
  • Technical: Software Engineering, Front-End Developer, Back-End Developer, Full Stack Developer
  • Product: Product Management, Product Designer
  • Branding
    • Sort
  • By date
  • By size
  • By popularity (upvote function)

    • Visual Design

    Sketching and Wireframes

    After establishing the concept of the app, I started to sketch our wireframes.

    Lo-Fidelity Mock Up

    Click to view
    The main page of the app. The search's is in a human-like greeting. The User can fill out what their needs are.
    Click to view
    Once the user selects what they want, it will generate a list of options based on their purpose and location.
    Click to view
    There is a filter option, where Users can fine-tune their search for more specificity.
    Click to view
    When the User selects which event they would like to attend, this page shows specific details of the event.

    Take Aways and Improvements

    Idea Viability

    Technical Requirements
  • Web Apps are totally viable!
  • This app would need to pull in embeds from popular event sites (ie: Eventbrite) and Google Geolocation API

    • Impact

  • Help women entering the tech industries find relevant events, information, and resources
  • Help them get into and stay interested the tech field
  • Ultimately contribute to correcting the imbalance of gender representation in tech companies
    • The improvements that we would have liked to add are features for a "Premium" membership. With that, it would include a mentorship connection for women in tech to start out.
    I had a really good time participating in this Design Hackathon. It was really fun to get some hands on experience on how to come up with a concept, then work on research, to execution on the design of the product with a team. With the limited amount of time we had, it was hard to "trim down the fat" of the concept of this project. But given how much time was given to us, I think we were able to achieve our goal and create an MVP.