👋🏼 Hi Team Maven!
This is Andy, and I believe I am the perfect candidate to join Maven as a new grad product designer.
This page tells the story why.

TL;DR: Based on my experience as a Maven student, I designed features around student profiles to foster engagement & connection. Doing this passion project while interning at Amazon made me realize Maven is where I belong... doing this fired me up so much!
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Designing a richer student profile on Maven 🏛

A passion project designing a cohort-based course native profile that facilitates more student interaction & connection

Role

Solo product designer (special thanks to Ridd's feedback along the way)

Scope

Brainstorm ideas around Maven profile & converged on specific features

Total Time

12 hours in total over 4 weeks

The proposal: 3 features in Maven student profile that can boost engagement

01. "Introduction Prompts" allows people to showcase their personalities & invite others to engage directly in the chat

Metric: increase in peer interaction during a course (↑ connection, ↑ satisfaction, ↑ retention)

Long term vision: become an async activity for people to stay in touch after a course

02. "Interests Tags" helps students find likeminded classmates & gives instructors a sense of the students' interest areas

Metric: increase in peer interaction during a course (↑ connection, ↑ satisfaction, ↑ retention)

Long term vision: key data to curate learning groups and recommend courses

03. "Courses" showcases the Maven courses someone has taken & invites others to ask about their experience

Metric: increase courses taken by current students & increase engagement

Long term vision: see learning journey & skills by showing past courses/projects (like resume)

Takeaways

Next steps: explore more visual variations, seek more context & test with users

Because my intention for the project was to offer some ideas & proposals without much business context & technical constraint, I focused more on the idea delivery. If I am to continue working on this project, I will spend more time developing visual explorations of the features and get feedback from both Maven & users.

Personal reflection: this is it!

I took on this side project during my Amazon internship trying to look for something interesting & aligns with my personal interest. As I continued, I totally didn't expect how fired up I was to do this than the day-job I was getting paid for. This says a lot!

People, people, people

My biggest takeaway from Tony Fadell’s new book “Build” is to bet on your career by working for your heroes.
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“Follow your curiosity. Once you’re armed with that knowledge, then you can start hunting down the people who are the best of the best and trying to work with them”

‍The Maven team came to mind.

Next, I’d chat with Johnny on the journey from traveling the world to Sail and now Maven, Rishin on how insights from finance translated over to education, Rachel’s experience from education in nonprofit to big tech to managing the Maven Accelerator course, Rob’s advice on improving strategic marketing skills & building 10x workplace culture, Mickey about being a great operator… and more awesome people at Maven! 🏛

What makes me unique?

01. As an immigrant from Taiwan, I constantly seek out improvement!

02. My diverse experience fuels me to think holistically!

03. I have insatiable passion for learning, education, and Maven!

Designing a richer student profile on Maven 🏛

The process

The proposal: 3 features in Maven student profile that can boost engagement

Ideas that didn't make the cut...

Takeaways

People, people, people

What makes me unique?

Wanna check out more work?

Amazon internship

TChat CRM feature

Coursera Forum Redesign