Sheffield Crowd
University of Sheffield | Brilliant Basics
PROJECT
The University of Sheffield features an Innovation Centre (USi Centre) which regularly runs hackathons and competitions amongst the students to develop innovative ideas, some of which they take forward for funding and/or partnerships with local business.
The platform allows the USi team to post challenges, and in response, students can post ideas. These can be voted up by other students, and eventually leading ideas are chosen to take forward. Chosen ideas have their own page templates which also integrates with a leading crowdfunding site.
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/students/news/sheffield-crowd-1.467315
PROCESS
They wanted a funding platform in order to assist in the funding of new ideas. I met with them and explored the proposition.
In response to this brief, we suggested changing the proposition so that the platform was an idea harvesting platform which integrated with an established crowd-funding site, such as Indigogo.
We analysed the context-of-use and created user profiles, storyboards and early sketched designs. We then ran workshops with the client to refine the proposition, before designing the software and guiding a development team to develop it.
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Lifecycle mapping
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User profiling
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Task flows
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Information architecture
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Design principles
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Visual design direction
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Concepting and sketching
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Information architecture
OUTCOME
Along with additional designers and a development team, we designed and built the platform and launched the MVP, in conjunction with a series of ideation events run by the the university's Innovation Department.
*The design was conducted in conjunction with Brilliant Basics