Kauffman Cloud
Project Overview
Kauffman Fellows wanted to improve their private internal web app, Kauffman Cloud, to increase and maintain graduated Fellows.
On a team of 3 UX Designers, I helped redesign and improve Kauffman Cloud's heuristics, information architecture & interactive navigation.
Client
Kauffman Fellows
Timeline
3 weeks | 2021
Tools
Figma | Miro | Slack
Role
UX Design
Visual Design
Interactive Design
Information Architecture
About
Kauffman Fellows Program
A two-year educational leadership program with the largest connected network of venture capital investors and innovation leaders in the world with 708 Fellows in over 50 different countries.
What is Kauffman Cloud?
KF developed and launched a private internal resource & networking platform known as Kauffman Cloud allowing Fellows to easily find information & discover other Fellows with common interests.
Kickoff Client Meeting & Brief
Our team collaborated with KF's team:
Product Manager, Developer, and the VP of Program & Networks.
"The goal is for Fellows, whether graduated or in the current class, to be able to jump into the platform and easily navigate and find all the information they need."
The Challenge
The current Kauffman Cloud is not easily accessible for Fellows to find resources, discover & network quickly with other Fellows.
What is the current experience like?
A challenge for our team was scheduling interview times with busy Fellows; due to limited time the user interviews & usability testing were both conducted with 3 Fellows on the current platform.
The purpose was to understand what & why they use Kauffman Cloud while observing their behavior when interacting with the current platform.
Fellows appeared confused and often second guessed their navigation choices while using the current Navigation Bar.
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Information architecture and hierarchy was misleading for Fellows to navigate through.
The inconsistent use of icons and titles paired with differing contexts caused confusion and hesitation.
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Staying within scope
To minimize our team's imminent scope creep, we created a MSCW method to help prioritize our work.
The Opportunity
Improve Kauffman Cloud's information architecture and heuristics to be visually accessible and intuitively navigable.
How might we design an improved & intuitive navigation?
Design Assets
Kauffman Fellows provided their company's design assets and tasked our team to implement Material Design's UI as we move into the design phase.
Initial Design
The apparent struggle Fellows faced while navigating Kauffman Cloud inspired a new navigation replacing old iconography and titles.
Original KC Navigation
Wireframe Sketch
Part of the goal was to get rid of most if not all of the drop down menus to consolidate and minimize confusion.
Initial Lo-Fi mockup
Initial Hi-Fi mockup
Renamed title and changed icon from Directory to Search icon and title since Fellows often used the Directory pg as a grand search feature.
Changed Library icon from a grad hat to a leaning stack of books.
Renamed title and changed icon from SIGs & Chapters to Groups with a tri-person icon.
Moved grad hat icon from Library to Classes.
Testing
Throughout the course of this project, our main point of contact was with the Product Manager, Ava. She was able to quickly find 2 busy Fellows, who were willing to test the new navigation bar.
Initial validations with Fellows suggested that our team was on track to design a final prototype with the exception of one feature.
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Fellows preferred the original 'Directory' title over 'Search' because of familiarity.
Both Fellows agreed that the iconography needed change, but did not find the search icon and title to be an intuitive improvement.
Final Prototype
"This will be a major upgrade to the look, feel, and functionality of Kauffman Cloud... I was especially impressed with the way your team seemed to understand our brand and organization. This is not easy to do, as there are many unique aspects to Kauffman."
Jeff Harbach
President & CEO | Kauffman Fellows
Mobile Concept Design
Recommendations for client
Recommendations from Team ARG! to our wonderful clients at Kauffman Fellows is to optimize Kauffman Cloud to be mobile-ready & responsive.
Additional features to build out:
> An internal messaging system
> Building out Kauffman HQ page
> Completing the Admin Console page
Reflection
If we had more time, we would've usability tested more people, or at least one more person.
Additionally, some challenges our team faced was staying within the scope of the project. We wanted to do it all, which led to some very late nights and revisits to the original scope of work in order to stay on track.
I am overtly impressed with how much our team accomplished with the little amount of time we had to design the entire platform. Our team's ability to collaborate effectively led to a phenomenal final product.
Big thanks to Ava and the rest of the team at Kauffman Fellows for keeping quick and easy open communication for the duration of this project. We couldn't have done it without y'all!