A little
context.
Tech Scout is a social platform where government and industry leaders can exchange emerging technology solutions. The idea was to make it easier for government teams to find useful technology and for small businesses to connect with the right people.
My team included designers, developers, and a project manager. We met several times a week to share what we were learning, create artifacts, and critique the designs.
We needed to understand both sides of the connection.
Government leaders often lacked the time and resources to find the right technology. Small businesses faced barriers to entering government and spent time chasing buyers who were not ready or interested.
Before designing, I needed to understand what each group was trying to do and where the current process was getting in the way.
Tech scouts
Discover technologies, make connections, and share findings within the DoD.
Technology holders
Promote their technology, make connections, and find partnerships.
The interviews gave us a closer look at the work.
We met weekly with a Tech Scout to learn about his day-to-day workflow. Hearing where he ran into problems helped us think about features that could support the way he worked.
As a team, we debriefed the interviews and developed new questions. I helped create scenario timelines from both the Tech Scout and small-business perspectives so we could see each step in the process.
After getting feedback on the scenarios, we moved into personas to record the goals, pain points, and opportunities for each user. These artifacts helped us fill gaps in our understanding before moving into design.
The research helped us focus on three needs.
With a clearer understanding of the users, we could identify the features that mattered most. The platform needed to support connections, give small businesses a place to promote their work, and make technologies easy to share.
Connections
Help government users find technologies and connect with small businesses.
Promotion
Give businesses a place to share their technologies with the DoD.
Sharing
Make technologies easy to share inside and outside the platform.
Each page went through several rounds of ideas.
Once the problem, roles, workflows, and key features were defined, I began sketching. Working at low fidelity made it easier to explore alternatives and get feedback before committing to detailed screens.
After we identified the pages, I created user flows to help communicate the experience to developers. The onboarding flow was one example of how we worked through the steps between individual screens.
A UI kit helped bring the designs together.
I created a UI kit with the help of Material UI. It gave me a reusable component library for prototyping and gave developers guidance on colors, typography, spacing, and sizing.
It also helped the platform feel consistent as the number of screens grew. The same design foundations could support discovery, uploading, and the different profile types.
The final screens connected discovery with useful detail.
The home page brought together new technologies, companies, and upcoming events. The discover experience let users search across technologies, companies, government branches, and people.
Small businesses could upload technologies to promote on the platform. User profiles showed background, skills, and contact information, while company profiles covered owners, mission statements, and areas of work.
Technology profiles brought the more detailed information together, including descriptions, technical documents, and technology readiness levels.