Mobile app
Team-up: Connecting Student Entrepreneurs with Same Minds
Why this project?
While pursuing my master’s degree at New York University (NYU), I had the opportunity to work on several hands-on projects in class and often dreamed of turning them into real ventures. However, I struggled to find reliable collaborators outside of the classroom, and over time, my enthusiasm for starting something on my own began to fade. I soon realized this wasn’t just my challenge—it’s a common experience for many students with entrepreneurial ideas. That’s what inspired the concept behind Team-up: a trustworthy, professional platform designed to connect students with like-minded partners so they can build and grow their ventures together.
I.Investigate the problem and generate persona:
📑 Primary research: school-wise survey
In order to research the problem, I made a survey to collect responses from 8 different schools at New York University (NYU). 67% mentioned that “they have difficulty connecting to peers who might have the same interests to initiate start-up projects” and 53% students said “they want to join start-up teams but lack connections”.
"I don't know where to connect with other students who would like to create a startup."
"I just came up with an idea for a startup and I need team members to fill in the gaps in my skills, but I don't know anyone. I just tried joining the Slack and I am going to campaign there. "
"Networking event can be helpful, but maybe cannot ensure the reliability of people you meet."
👥 Persona:
From both qualitative and quantitive analysis, there are four main characteristics of my target audience:
NYU-affiliated students
Interest in entrepreneurship
Strong desire to connect with a community of like-minded peers for collaboration on projects
Extensive online experience and easy access to technology/internet
📌 Current Solutions and drawbacks:
University provides several solutions, for example, creating slack channel for students, hosting relative social events, and having a website to make students connect. These solutions seem to create a platform, but they all lacks structured designs to help students find their matches efficiently.
Outside of the school, there are apps and accelerators providing matching service, however, these solutions generally require lots of user information, slowing down the matching process and raising trust crisis.
This channel serves as a basic platform for students to share the information and get connected. However, there are several concerns about the effectiveness of it.
No filter to help them sort out information
Nowhere for students to know if some recruitment or collaborations are still open
Little information or background about the members
Team Hunt event is an in-person event hosted by NYU entrepreneurship, aiming to help students connect and find potential partners and teams. Usually the event is hosted 2 times per semester. Despite the offline form, which excludes tons of students, the structure of the event might also post problems. Since it is a free networking event, it might be hard for students to find someone who happen to have the same interests. Another problem is that it is not a high-frequency event where you can always turn to get to know people.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Orbit
The University of Chicago Airtable spreadsheets
Y Combinator (YC) is one of the most renowned startup accelerators. As part of the process, YC requires users to complete detailed profiles and after the profiles are submitted and reviewed by YC staff, the system will introduce profiles based on the key filters generated from their information.
Profile Completion Pressure: Users are required to fill out a significant amount of information for their profiles and these questions can be daunting, leading to hesitation in completing the profile.
Inability to View Other Profiles Without Approval: Users cannot access other profiles or start making connections until they have completed all the information and have had their profiles reviewed by YC staff.
Users swipe left👈 if they're not interested in the profile, or right 👉 if they want to start a conversation with the potential co-founder.
The profile shows to the users includes all the information including basic background, entrepreneurial status, work/educational experience, hobby, social media link and anything the person wants to share, which can be inevitably overwhelming to users and slow down their decision making process.
Furthermore, when users swipe right for a profile, representing they are interested and want to be connected, they cannot send anything but to wait in the dark for the person to accept the invite.
How might we create a trustful online environment to help student find their ideal collaborators efficiently?
How might we provide student entrepreneurs with access to a network of like-minded peers?
III. Design Process: from low-fi to high-fi prototype
💡 Draft low-fi prototype:
Key words from HMW: trustful, ideal collaborators, efficient, network,
3 main features, each corresponding to a way to help users get connected: Connect, Event and Community.
Connect: users can easily identify potential collaborators through reading profiles and directly reach out to them. This feature provides an efficient way for users to search and get to know others.
Event: it serves as a centralized hub for users to stay informed about the latest entrepreneurial events. This feature allow users to connect with peers through joining relevant events.
Community: this feature creates opportunity for users to have conversations with peers of same minds, helping them connect with others and enhancing the collaborative spirit of the entrepreneurial community.
✍️ Key conclusions from Concept testing
I conducted concept testing with three graduate students at NYU. Two of the participants are current graduate students seeking like-minded peers for their startup ventures, while the third, a recent graduate working at a startup, expressed a keen interest in the design concept.
Key conclusion from concept test:
The testers expressed dissatisfaction with the current use of Slack channel because of insufficient information to learn about each other. They consider factors such as past work and educational experiences, skill sets, and even personalities should be showed through profiles.
The topic of filters was mentioned multiple times since they appears in both Connect & Community features; participants indicated that effective filters are crucial for productive profile and discussion searches.
🔐 Key design considerations & main features
How to help users search collaborators more efficiently？
Pre-questions when Log-in:
When users log-in, they are prompted to answer some questions to help the system filter and suggest suitable matches later on. Example questions are:
What industries are you interested in?
This question helps users identify peers with similar interests, laying the groundwork for future collaboration.
What's your entrepreneurial status?
This question helps clarify users' objectives—whether they want to join startup teams or need team members, or they want to find people to discuss ideas.
Essential information displayed on profiles:
Profiles are displayed based on their responses to the pre-questions, and each profile card includes information: the user’s name, occupation, interests, school affiliation, and responsibilities they can take, which are essential enough for users to get to know the person quickly and decide whether to go to the next step.
If users find a specific profile that interests them, they can click on the card to access more detailed information about the person, facilitating deeper connections and potential collaborations.
How to help users make the best use of Event feature?
The display of Events indicates more upcoming events of the week by putting event cards in a horizontally scrollable format. Events that have already passed will appear in grey, indicating they are no longer clickable for registration.
Clicking on an event card allows users to view full details about the event. Additionally, a demographic feature is designed to provide insights about potential attendees, such as their interests, school affiliations, or goals on the platform. This information helps users gain a better understanding of their peers attending the event, assisting them in making informed decisions about whether or not to participate.
How to encourage users to join discussions and find their ideal peers?
The 4 themes, which are carefully selected from interviewing with our target users, are the main topics in Hub feature. These themes help maintain participation from the users as they can provide useful and relevant information for them.
In discussions, users can click others' profile photos to get their profiles if they create one. This feature provides a convenient way for users to get connected with ideal peers.
IV. Usability Test
🔐 usa
I conducted usability testing with three potential users using the think-aloud approach. During the sessions, participants were asked to speak out their thoughts as they performed the following tasks:
Find a match and reach out to the person.
Join an event that interests them.
Create a profile for themselves.
Delve into a discussion they like.
🤔 Inputs from the testers:
Keep users informed about pre-question
Some users were confused when the pre-questions appeared immediately after they finish school information. One tester even paused and asked what the pre-questions were for. This suggests that the transition from the login process to the pre-questions isn’t clear or intuitive enough. To address this, I’ve added a brief explanation before the questions begin, helping users understand their purpose and improving the flow.
Not let users feel excluded when reading demographic information
In my initial design, demographic information was presented through statements like "60% of participants are from NYU Steinhardt" and "50% of participants are interested in EdTech." However, two testers noted that this wording made them feel excluded, as if they were expected to fit into these categories to attend the event. This feedback highlighted a misunderstanding of my intent, which was to provide users with a general overview of the attendees’ backgrounds. To address this, I revised the format by replacing the text with a pie chart. This visual representation allows users to easily interpret the data without feeling limited or excluded by specific categories
Provide more guidance on making user profiles
Add my profile is the place where users thoughtfully curate their information to attract more connections. However, the current design of the profile creation process may intimidate users for a few reasons. First, it displays all the fields upfront, which can discourage users. Second, there are no instructions or guidance on the page to help users navigate their answers. I changed the design to make different sections expandable to resolve the first issue.
Below shows some key features of Team-up. If you are interested, check out the app here.
