TrueStar Foundation

1871, Chicago’s technology and entrepreneurship center, was hosting Hackathon for Good- a hackathon focused on helping a nonprofit in Chicago. Some of my co-workers and I decided to volunteer our time to give back.

TrueStar Foundation helps inspire and prepare kids for life by exposing them to real-world experiences in the workforce by providing a place to express their voice and choose their path.

Duration
2 days (June 3, 2021 - June 5, 2021)

Team
- 3 Project Managers
- 1 QA
- 1 UI Designer
- 1 UX Architect

Role
UX Architect

This solution won the hackathon!

View prototype

The prompt

“Design, architect, and develop a cost-effective technical solution to serve and connect with more youth in ways that will empower them to share their voice, discover their path, and realize their dreams. Submissions will be reviewed by a panel of judges made up of leaders from the Chicago tech community.”

Gathering info

With a pretty vague prompt, we needed to learn more about The TrueStar Foundation and understand their business. The team immediately went to their website, blog, social media pages and more to start documenting their offerings.

Knowing our prompts, we began to write down our Jobs To Be Done. Writing out these objectives clearly help the team stay focused on what problems we are solving for. We also documented what is in/out of scope and broader business objectives to keep in mind, with the goal of making our solution realistic to their wants/needs.

The user

Since we needed to provide a validation solution within 2 days, there was little time to create a persona. However, identifying the user was crucial. The primary target user for TrueStar is young teens, specifically GenZ.

Our solution needed to cater to their expectations of other apps they use. This also helped us make assumptions on certain interactions based on popular, mainstream apps.

Jobs to be Done

Solve for why the youth will want to use our solution by providing a theme of self confidence, belief, motivation and validation.
Generate constant engagement with the youth while providing value in honing their professional skills.
Bridge the gap between the youth and their mentors/instructors to provide constant guidance and interaction in a safe space.

How do we build the solution in a scalable way for the TrueStar Foundation? We wanted to set them up with a solution that worked with their current business model and their resources.

The solution

We needed to start creating something- so the team got together and decided that we would build a space for youths to connect and learn. Currently TureStar has youtube series and course content they provide to members.

Our solution is a web based solution that makes it easy to find and connect students (and mentors) through youth-led interest groups to collaborate and work on projects.

App map

Now that we had a direction, I started to create an app map. I wanted to make sure that everyone was on the same page on what we were building. I also knew that even if we didn’t get the chance to build out all the screens in a prototype, this could be something the charity could use, if they pick our solution as the winner, for the team that ultimately would build this out.

Wireframes

There was no time to concept test, so I had to jump right into wireframe creation. By breaking down these wireframes a little more, you can see how I took the Jobs To Be Done and included those into the solution.

Community

Community is a space that would allow students to show off their work. As a student within the TrueStar foundation, kids are a part of Arts & Media classes. Having a space to show off the work they do for TrueStar was important.

This addresses the following Job To Be Done:

Solve for why the youth will want to use our solution by providing a theme of self confidence, belief, motivation and validation.

Posting their work can help students with their self confidence, motivation and validation. They can share these post to others and on their personal social media platforms.

Spaces

Spaces provides students a place where they can find their interests and collaborate on company projects. The TrueStar Foundation has a network of companies that provide students opportunities, sometimes even paid! These students can collaborate on projects to gain real world experience. Currently, students have no platform and rely solely on doing these tasks in person.

In the example shown here, students that like music have a place where any company projects about music can be easily found. They can also view careers that might pertain to their interest in music.

This addresses the following Jobs To Be Done:

Generate constant engagement with the youth while providing value in honing their professional skills.
Bridge the gap between the youth and their mentors/instructors to provide constant guidance and interaction in a safe space.

Classes

Classes is all about leveraging the educational classes and lectures TrueStar provides to their students. They have material on their website and on their YouTube channel, but it’s very scattered- leaving students often confused on where to get the information. This section provides material in one central location. This is also a very scalable page that can grow as TrueStar continues adding more content.

This addresses the following Job To Be Done:

Generate constant engagement with the youth while providing value in honing their professional skills.

Profile

The profile screen is a way for students to see what groups they are apart of and how many projects they have. They can also share more about themselves and their interests in hopes that in the future, it could be used to make useful suggestions. One of the most notable things on the profile screen was the ‘badges’. As users continue to take on more projects and progress through educational material, they could earn badges to keep them motivated.

This addresses the following Jobs To Be Done:

Solve for why the youth will want to use our solution by providing a theme of self confidence, belief, motivation and validation.
Generate constant engagement with the youth while providing value in honing their professional skills.