HEED
Helped validate and strategize the startup initiative: HEED. Designed a medium fidelity prototype for their geo-location refugee aid app which successfully allowed the founding team to join the top 8 of 30 teams to qualify for ALTCITY’s intense Bootcamp.
GOAL
Spend a month on feature exploration, validation, and prototyping of HEED, a mobile app envisioned by a young Lebanese entrepreneur. The app enables refugees to request different types of help from the communities they’re in and, in return, the helping community members are rewarded with redeemable prizes from their local market. The ultimate aim is to win the attention of the jury at the SPEED competition and progress to Bootcamp.
PROCESS
UX Design, UI Design, Gamification, Prototyping, Validation, User Research
The founder and I agreed early on, and due to the closing deadline of SPEED, that we would only develop a mid-to-high fidelity mockup of HEED’s major user flow that illustrated an already signed-up refugee, Ziad, asking for cloth and receiving it from a Lebanese local, Carla, who in turn would claim her prize and view her profile.
One of my main tasks before design, was to help the team behind HEED refine their reward system by introducing gamification. We chose to adopt a point-based system. The challenge here was to create a set of rules that empowered a refugee to submit several relevant help requests, in addition to encouraging the local contributors to participate, win points, and return to the platform. One of the solutions I incorporated to help contributors return to the platform, for example, was to introduce more complex premium rewards that were only unlocked after a decent point sum was gathered.
I then kicked off the design process starting with building the screens for each of Ziad and Carla’s sides of the flow. I kept the design of the iOS mockup as simple and clean as possible for two reasons.
People with little knowledge of mobile apps should be able to use it.
The app was to be localized in various languages; therefore, the interface text was to flip left-to-right and right-to-left with minimum UI changes.
Ziad, a Syrian refugee’s, initial flow starts with him choosing a request for cloth from a list of request types. He fills the micro-form, and checks the amount of points that would be deducted from his total points (100pts on first login) if the need is met. The request is then queued into a list as it waits for a community match.
Calra, a local contributor, logs in and views the refugee requests plotted on a map as well as listed from nearest to farthest in a clean list. She directly notices a cloth request that she can satisfy from her husband’s old wardrobe and so she begins chatting with Ziad. Since a cloth request would require them to meet, Carla and Ziad agree on how and when to meet. I also suggested and added an instant translation to the chat so that refugees and contributors who spoke different languages could communicate with ease (last frame).
To create the interactive prototype, i linked all the artboards in Adobe XD into their respective user flow orders. This enabled me, not only to present the app’s transitions, but also to be able to allow any user, or stakeholder to interact with the prototype live on a phone. This came in very handy, allowing the entire team to story-tell and discuss the design.
Every connecting line between each artboard models a real user flow transition.
The linked prototype could be screen recorded as shown here. This recording demos the flow, starting with Ziad discovering Carla’s notification to help and ending with Carla claiming her prize and viewing her HEED profile.
With HEED, the model of help doesn’t stop at the contributors themselves, but extends to the local businesses who, in addition to providing redeemable prizes, act as indirect philanthropists by rewarding contributor help. This has big social value to both HEED and the corporations. Thus, for every reward they post, I’ve designed a full promotion page that businesses could use to display a hero image, a product description, and a message, which they can then use as space to introduce their company and support their cause to empower their communities.
After completing HEED’s planned UI, I went on to design the presentation that would communicate this app to the jury members and attendees of SPEED, a startup competition that chooses the best ideas to join an accelerated Bootcamp program to help validate, improve, and solidify the ideas of the qualifying startups before exposing them to investors.
The presentation split the slides in two, the storyline of Ziad on the left, and that of Carla on the right. The animated gestures and vivid UI helped to tell a unique story of kindness between two strangers.
HEED’s heartfelt idea, interactive prototype, and presentation helped the team join the top 8 out of 30 teams that would go on to be part of Bootcamp.
Finally, I continued supporting the team during the validation phase of Bootcamp, by designing and carrying out a survey for contributors and NGOs. This helped better understand how people currently donate cloth and prove how NGOs would play a vital role on HEED.
RESULTS
The work on HEED demonstrates a typical approach to LEAN UX: working collaboratively, rapidly exploring features, and iterating over ideas and design. The main focus in such a process is on the agile construction of a single user flow that can prove the relevancy of HEED in the startup realm. This lean and visual approach was highly effective and awarded us a final spot in SPEED. Together with the Bootcamp program, we were able to reiterate on the foundation of HEED to further validate and reintegrate features and pivots into the app’s realm. Today, the team is focusing firstly on cloth donation and is communicating with local NGOs to properly integrate them with their platform.
TOOLS UTILIZED
Sharpie and paper, Adobe XD, Google Drive, Microsoft Powerpoint.
Some of the mid-fidelity mockup icons are from thenounproject.com