NextStep
Creating a personalized team of mentors for people trying to further their career
Team
The founder, Product Manager, and Software Engineer
My Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Whimsical, and Webflow
Timeline
March - August 2020, 6 months
Deliverable
Marketing website and product launch
Making a career change in today’s professional world requires access a proper network. In many cases, even if people have access to a network, some still struggle with a career change due to the lack of focus / direction, confidence in their abilities, and their ability to sell themselves to potential employers. NextStep is a startup that wants to solve this problem and empower people to own ‘what they want to be’ by providing a one-stop-shop of engaging career resources.
I was brought onto the team (remotely) in order to lead all UX research efforts, advise in creating the current business model, lead all design efforts of the main web app, establish Nextstep's brand identity, and create an engaging marketing website.
An engaging web app that is now currently being tested amongst beta testers.
Created a responsive website that showcases NextStep's mission, brand identity, and product (Built through Webflow).
Click to show more, or scroll to view the final product.
After some informal testing with a handful of users, it was now time to add color / styling and create the high-fidelity wireframes.
Because a lot of the heavy lifting was already done in the mid-fidelity version in regards to visual hierarchy etc. this process had a relatively quick turn around time.
Early on in the design process, the founder and I was also working together on creating a branding document. During this time we secured the name NextStep and decided other branding assets based off the branding attributes the founder wanted.
The colors were chosen based on the idea of NextStep being a fun engaging brand that will help users make positive changes in regards to their professional life.
After spending months reading. I discovered the importance of having a detailed design system. This not only alleviates a lot of miscommunication that could potentially happen when working with developers, but also makes it easy in case another designer would join the team.
Although additional research and testing is always preferred when it comes to building products. I realize now, that when working with real world stakeholders, sometimes as a product designer, I will have to make compromises. In this case, my team and I have agreed to hold off on usability testing and revisions until our upcoming beta launch.
As this project continues to develop, I will be updating this case study in order to provide updated information on our testing results and what key insights we were able to discover.