A challenge which was a project; design from scratch

Cheory is an educational collaboration platform that creates a connection between professors and students for educational activities.

After reviewing business documents and interviewing relevant stakeholders, it has been determined that this product solves the following problems;

Professors have difficulties to find a perfect student for their projects.
The professors have limitations in their time to find the right person.
The students do have not enough experience and knowledge to start a project individually.
The student needs a powerful CV to continue the educational and professional path in the future.

Reviewing business documents and organizing stakeholder interview's facts

Improving the documents based on the direct competitors, indirect competitors and best practices

Important points:

Due to the lack of time, at first, the basic touch points were extracted and designed. Finally, these sections were connected. With this approach, a large product was divided into smaller and assessable products.
According to the age and behavioural diversity of the users, the touch points used by each persona were detected in the persona information form and were used in the design of UX and UI.

The research and design process were based on the product's essential touch points; the IA optimized by cart sorting test.

Ideation and solutions to solving the problems which Cheory wants cope with:

Making a comprehensive profile for professors and students to show the detail of abilities and skills.
Designing useful features to define projects and engage the students.
Designing chat and messaging features to ease communications.
Evaluation of the projects from the collaborator's side to achieve a high-quality network.
Planning to find the overlaps between professors' needs and students' activities to make effective collaboration.

Process preview;

UX methods to calibrate the product based on the UCD (user-centered design) approach:

User research and creating the persona.
Making IA based on the product touch points and feature lists, and refining by card sorting test.
Competitor analysis and best practice observation based on the critical points of the product.
Defining the journey map.
Wireframing based on the persona and journey map.
Researching and making facts for the colour palette.
UI design and prototyping.

The table of persona specs was designed based on the the fact according to the basic touch points of the product.
All the people surveyed were real individuals.

Designing a journey map and scenarios of personas with the approach of analyzing user behaviour with product touchpoints.

Analyzing competitors based on similar product touch points with them

High-fidelity wireframing based on the UX design, persona and journey maps;

Research document to determine brand colour. This research was based on the business mission, its goals and competitor products review.
All steps were based on business and product facts.

UI design; colour palate, design system, typeface;