Why did we build Plexuss?
College research is a messy, tedious and disorganized process. Being a team of recent college grads who had gone through the process ourselves we wanted to make it easier for future students. As a bonus we fostered a supportive & academic centric community.
Student problems we wanted to address
Making the scholarship process easier & consolidated
Provide better tools & resources to make the college research process easier
Building a truly academic community vs an entertainment/content driven social network
My Role
I designed every piece end to end for mobile web, desktop, iOS & Android. I worked cross functionally between the multiple departments of our small team (data science/marketing, development & sales) to bring our shared vision to life.
Challenges
#1 Eliminating barriers instead of creating more
I tried to emphasize the importance of setting correct expectations from the beginning & reducing friction to make it easier for someone to signup.
I did research on how existing sites & competitors onboarded students and how we could make ours easier. I championed for an A/B test to validate ideas. I provided hotjar recordings of points of friction, statistics and recordings of other signups & even related real world scenarios but ultimately it was not enough to warrant a change.
#2 Production to development process
Earlier on in my product role I started to dissect our process. Having a working google doc that exceeded 90 pages and a plethora of outside links just didn't feel right. I did extensive research on how we could better manage issues and help our developers create more true to mockup implementations. For a TLDR we implemented one of the coolest bug capturing software out there (Jam.dev) and paired it with an incredible issue / tracker software (linear.app).
With the implementation of this new toolset, we achieved a 33% reduction in product development/QA time while heightening the accuracy in transforming mockups into tangible implementations.
©2024 - Nic Nuyten
Walnut Creek, CA