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OVERVIEW

Later 24hrs Industry Hackathon

My role

Our team of 5 UX designers created a digital solution to enhance the social media marketing experience for micro-SMBs (small and medium-sized enterprises). 

We were awarded top 3 of the hackathon. 

User research

Prototyper

Timeline

24 Hours

Team

Albert L.

Dayana S.

Izobelle R.

Olivia H.

Tools used

Figma 

InVision

PROJECT BRIEF

Discovering the problem place

Micro-SMBs (small and medium-sized enterprises) struggle to grow their brands due to lack of time, resources, and business experience. They need an efficient process for maximizing their social media marketing while being conservative with their already limited resources.

OUR STRATEGY

Developing a plan 

0 hrs

8 hrs

16 hrs

  • Get to know each other 

  • Assign roles 

  • Explore the problem space

  • Discuss and decide  

  • Brainstorm ideas 

  • Persona

  • Sketching 

  • Prototyping 

  • Create slide deck

  • Write scripts 

  • Run prototype

  • Practice, practice, practice

OUR APPROACH

Establishing ground rules 

As we only have 24 hours and there are 5 UX designers, we decided to establish ground rules to prevent misunderstandings and disagreements. 

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Communicate openly

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Time boxing

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Be nice to each other

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Micro-SMBs struggle to generate content consistently

50%

of small startups fail within the first five years. 

60%

of marketers say generating content consistently is the biggest challenge. 

Market Gap: 

No integrated tools that can help marketers select and create the right Instagram content at the right time, based on active trends and customer questions or needs. 

PERSONA

Understanding our users

Although we had a general sense of our potential users, we wanted to hone in on their specific needs so that we are designing with intention. 

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REFRAMING THE PROBLEM

The above findings helped us further narrow down our problem statement, so we came up with our final design question:

"HMW ... enhance the process of generating consistent content for micro-SMBs, in order to help them grow their brands?"

IDEATING

Exploring potential solutions 

After understanding who we were designing for, we started brainstorming and generating ideas. We voted and decided that we wanted our solution to include the following:

1. Streamlines the process of creating a full-fledged draft post that is ready to publish. 

2. Reduces the decision-making and planning for every post. 

3. Frees up manpower and time for other business needs. 

FINAL SOLUTION

The "Create" Feature

Inspiration gathering page

  • Provide users with inspirations 

  • Select trending content based on social media analysis

Caption creator and tone analyzer

  • Save time by generating captions with one click 

  • Analyze caption tone to ensure it matches with the content

Preview new post and current trend

  • Preview post to see how it fits with previous photos

  •  Save photos to schedule post

Future Steps 

​With more time, I would like to complete the following: 

  • Validate assumptions by conducting thorough user research  

  • Establish constraints from the business side and understand the business goal

  •  Perform at least 2 rounds of user testing to uncover usability and design issues

What I've learned 

This was my first ever hackathon! I learned so much from this experience. Communication and collaboration were essential to our success, as we were able to make sure everyone was on the same page regarding the design approach. Furthermore, I learned how to find a balance between users and business. Understanding our business objective helped me design effectively. I need to ensure our solution has a strong value proposition for the company. So I made sure to touch briefly on why this solution would make users choose Later over other marketing platforms.

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