LYNK
2021
BACKGROUND
Lynk was my very first UX assignment, as a project for my introductory UX course. The assignment was to create a usable prototype of an application of our choosing. We'd spent the semester learning about design systems and the fundamental principles of UX, and we had to put it into practice.
It was my first project, and to list everything that I would do differently now would take far too long. I had just learned the fundamentals of UX, and was still a novice in software like Figma. So why did I keep it?
The simple answer is that I still enjoy it. It's interesting to go back through and see how I've improved, and to think about what I would do differently. It's a bit like looking at an old picture of yourself - as a child, or maybe during a teenage awkward phase.
Garish design choices aside, I still take pride in how much work I put into it, and I remember how excited I was to start the project. It was fun, but, beyond that, it was one of the biggest learning experience I had.
CONCEPT
Tinder, but for professional networking.
Do you remember, early in your career, when people would tell you to "network" constantly? Personally, I never knew exactly how I was supposed to do that. I had just begun looking for internships and jobs that were actually in my field when we got this assignment, and I was having some trouble finding and making contact with people in my field outside of my classmates. For the project, we were prompted to think of a problem or inconvenience that we wished we could solve.
Therefore, that became my app - a boiled-down, streamlined, rapid-fire version of LinkedIn (creatively named "Lynk") to throw your name at any hiring manager that would listen. I tried to take the simplicity of speed-dating apps like Tinder and mix it with the purpose and aesthetic of LinkedIn and the corporate world.
Click within this window to use the prototype as you would on your phone.
DESIGN
We had just learned what a "design system" was. I'll keep it brief - I gathered a moodboard of images vaguely related to buzzwords like technology, networking, corporate, professional, etc., and selected common elements.
I found that they almost exclusively used a sans-serif font family with straight, minimalist lettering. I found that their color palettes (or, those of the stock images that came from the search) usually had bright, electric blues mixed with greys and sterile-looking backdrops.
PROTOTYPING
Adding the interactivity was the hardest and, by far, longest part of the process. Figma is amazingly intuitive, but I remember hours that were spent in my University's workspaces switching from YouTube tutorials, our lecture presentations, and Figma's own how-to guides to try and get the components to do what I wanted.
This was the largest prototype I made - mostly because I did many things the hard way.
