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.
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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?
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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.
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This was the largest prototype I made - mostly because I did many things the hard way.
