UXFriends - UXF
Responsive app designed to support designers with building support networks.
Overview
AI and Live mentorship for juniors
Problem
UX professionals, particularly those new to the field, struggle to find accessible platforms for networking and genuine interactions with mentors to gain practical insights, constructive feedback, and stay on top of industry trends. Established resources and local communities fall short causing a feeling of insecurity.
Goals
Connect junior UX/UI designers to seniors in their field.
Empower designers with an aggregate resource for networking and career growth.
Role
UX Design - Team of 5 Designers
Timeline
1 Month, May - June 2025
Skills
Wireframe
User testing
Responsive UI Design
Identify and understand the pain points and unmet needs of junior UX professionals in networking and mentorship, focusing on the acquisition of valuable insights, constructive feedback, and industry trend knowledge essential for supporting career development and alleviating professional insecurity.
Interviews (in-person, phone and virtual)
Surveys
Observations
Data analysis
Competitor analysis
Participants
3 live group interviews with
UX Instructor
Mid Level UX Designer
Business Analyst (UX bootcamp Alum)
22 survey participants
Research Questions
How to designers from various levels connect?
How can we leverage AI to support designers in building connections and support networks?
What makes designers feel supported or feel that they are a part of a community?
Competitor Analysis
This data helped me understand features that are currently available on other platforms and what features could be improved for the UXF tool.
✅ Anonymity/Increased Privacy/User Verification
✅ Widespread use
✅Real time status updates for users
✅ Channels for targeted
❌Invite only
✅ Large user base
✅ Gain followers
❌ Depersonalized
❌ Chaotic interface
❌ Complicated UI
❌ Can feel Botty
❌ Pay for premium
✅ In person conncetions
✅ Better Accessibility
✅ Casual events
❌ Time consuming (in person)
❌ More Casual
✅ Good employment/networking opportunity
✅ High availability
✅ Global Network
✅ Secure Payment Platform
❌ Pay to bid on jobs
❌ Lots of competition
❌ Expensive
Key Insights
Channels/rooms are important for targeted discussion
Users feel confined to specific interaction expectations while using current popular platfoms
Opportunities
One stop shop for connection
Make a casual place where people can be vulnerable risk free
Bridge the gap between professional and casual interactions
Professionals have diverse networking preferences.
This data highlights the importance of understanding where our community engages and how we can facilitate those connections.
LinkedIn is the most popular platform, with 42.3% of respondents using it to network.
In-person connections also play a significant role, accounting for 19.2% of the responses.
Other platforms like Slack and various community groups each have smaller but notable percentages, indicating diverse networking preferences.
User Interviews
“Group projects are the best way to connect.”
“Just because you didn’t get the job doesn’t mean you’re a bad designer.”
“It’s not the most talented — it’s the ones who grind.”
Key Findings
many enter UX through non-traditional paths (illustration, engineering, business, etc.).
Mentorship is lacking — most struggled to find experienced guides.
Community support is inconsistent, often relying on meetups, Slack, and social media.
Group projects and informal chats are preferred over passive content.
Motivations centered around networking, mentorship, feedback, and staying up-to-date on current trends in the field.
Empathy Map
Junior designers often experience significant insecurity when surrounded by others’ career successes, abundant job postings, and polished portfolios. Despite actively engaging with professional communities and staying informed on industry trends, they remain uncertain about where to focus their efforts, fear missing opportunities, and question their overall career growth strategy.
SAYS+DOES
I worked hard to get to where I am
looks for app and places to connect
looks for opportunities to advance career
HEARS
About people getting jobs
About new trends
Tips from social media
SEES
Job postings
Lots of applicants
Impressive design portfolios
THINKS+FEELS
Unsure about where to start
"I'm missing opportunities"
"Am I using time effectively?"
User Insights
Success in design stems from persistent effort over raw talent.
Mentorship and social platforms fall short in providing the depth in community designers crave.
AI, while disruptive, is seen as a significant opportunity.
User Persona
Leveraging the insights obtained from our research, we successfully defined our target users through the development of a detailed user persona.
Value Proposition Statement
We want to help aspiring and early-career UX designers by offering a networking platform that can be used to connect with other people in the industry to improve skills and advance their career.
UX Hypothesis
If we provide an accessible, curated resource hub and community-driven feedback mechanism for early-career UX designers, then they will be better equipped to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and industry demands, resulting in -
Improved portfolios
Increased confidence in navigating their career paths.
UX Scenario - "Carly's first real UX Connection"
Carly is a 30-year-old recent graduate of a UX bootcamp. She is passionate about her new career path but she feels uncertain and seeks meaningful guidance in UX. She actively engages with professional networks like LinkedIn but finds the platform overwhelming and impersonal. Despite these challenges, she is enthusiastic and determined to successfully transition into the UX field.
Journey Map
Carly completes bootcamp
She posts her certificate on LinkedIn and adds it to her resume.
Carly looks for jobs on LinkedIn
She searches and applies for jobs. A lot of companies are hiring.
Carly gets multiple rejections
She continues searching, but is beginning to worry about finding work.
Carly doesn’t know what to do
She creates a UXF account and uploads her credentials.
Carly finds connections on UXF
Searches through connections and gets useful career advice.
Carly gets a job interview and offer
A UXF connection reaches out based on her portfolio and is invited to an interview.
UXF gives Carly something she couldn’t find elsewhere — a clear first step and a place to belong.
In just a couple of weeks, Carly-
Identifies a mentor who provides the meaningful guidance she seeks.
Works on a real project that fills a portfolio gap.
Obtains constructive, actionable feedback to improve her work.
Begins to feel part of a UX community
Ideation + Brainstorming
Rapid Ideation
We began with a rapid brainstorming session using sticky notes, dot voting, and a prioritization matrix to identify the highest-impact, most feasible ideas. This matrix provided a clear basis for prioritizing the app concept.
High-Priority Features
Mentorship matching (including AI mentorship).
Collaborative projects for practice and portfolio content.
Consolidated notification center.
Low Fidelity Prototype
We quickly created low-fidelity prototypes to assess key design and functionality aspects. Sketches helped us explore navigation, home screen layout, and feature organization such as project tabs and mentor access. Our goal is to develop a streamlined career networking app for junior UX designers, inspired by the simplicity and integration of the Roku/Amazon Firestick interface, to improve workflow and notification management.
Usability Testing
We mapped out three primary tasks.
Task 1 - View notifications
Task 2 - Vote on a user submission
Task 3 - Find a mentor
Each task was defined by goals, steps, and success criteria. Our objective was to identify any points of friction affecting users’ ability to complete these essential tasks.
We shared this prototype with participants and observed them interacting with the interface in real time. As users engaged in the tasks, I took detailed notes and asked clarifying questions whenever they encountered challenges.
100% success rate.
All users successfully completed every task indicating a smooth and intuitive user experience.
Mid Fidelity Prototype
Iterating through our ideation process and guided by methods like MoSCoW and prioritization matrices, we refined our design to integrate essential features such as collaborative projects, career advice, and resume management.
Desktop Prototype
The goal was to keep the responsive UI design simple. This is the main dashboard for users.
AI counseling is available front and center
Notifications, Challenges and Projects are all immediately visible and give at-a-glance summaries of their corresponding section's content.
Elegant iconography keeps the interface free of clutter and the navigation on the left of the screen neatly organizes the most common user interactions like finding friends and connecting other apps.
Takeaways
User research uncovered the temporal challenges of breaking into a new professional field.
User interviews are an effective method for building professional connections and gaining valuable insights. From these interviews, I learned that UX career paths are rarely linear and tend to be dynamic. Additionally, the interviews sparked broader conversations within the team about our commitment to supporting junior designers as they continue to advance in their careers.
Next Steps
Conduct additional user interviews to gain deeper insights into professional narratives.
Implement post-launch follow-ups to ensure the product remains relevant and continually updated.