M.I.T.

Prototyping a problem-solving platform.

AGENCY: Blue State Digital
YEAR: 2016

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is constantly developing online platforms to open its digital doors to qualified students all over the world. Blue State Digital, where I worked from 2009 to 2013, has partnered with M.I.T. on a number of digital projects.

In early 2016, BSD asked me to come on board to help shape a prototype for a collaborative problem-solving platform that M.I.T. was thinking of building. So-called “challenges” — where student teams work together to solve a scientific, technological, or business problem — are a common part of an M.I.T. education, but they don’t easily translate to a purely virtual context, with students and alumni logging in from around the world.

On board as a freelance UX director, I worked closely with my former BSD colleagues and the primary client contact to hone the strategy and tackle some complex UX, content, and technology challenges: Should students choose their teammates, or should teams be assigned? What kind of collaboration interface will enable students to work together best? How should alumni advisors participate? Should M.I.T. build an entire new platform from scratch, or could some existing platforms (e.g., Slack) help drive the experience?

After lots of strategizing, sketching, whiteboarding, wireframing, prototyping, designing, and presenting, we’d made a lot of progress toward determining whether such a platform was truly viable.