IdeaNest
Collaboration Platform for UW Students to Build Diverse Project Teams
Scope
UI/UX
Mobile Design
Team
Individual
Role
Product Designer
Date
Autumn 2024
Overview
During my UW year, I found many peers often have passion projects or startup ideas, but struggle to find teammates outside their immediate circle.
Ideanest aims to bridge that gap — making it easy to discover collaborators with complementary skills, whether for class projects, hackathons, or personal ventures.
Problem Space
Students have ideas — but they often stall at the collaboration stage.
Existing tools (Discord, Reddit, Instagram) aren’t designed for structured discovery, and many students lack access to broader peer networks outside their classes or clubs.
Research
I interviewed 12 UW students across Informatics, HCDE, Interaction Design, CS, and Business and found:
01
Connection
Many students wanted to build something but didn’t know who to ask
02
Visibility
Visibility and “signal” mattered — students needed to know who was open to collaborating
03
Connection
Trust and clear expectations were essential for successful connections
Pain Point
01
Hard to find people with shared interests outside immediate circle
02
Students worry about being ignored, judged, or misunderstood when reaching out
03
Existing platforms are cluttered,
not designed for project matchmaking
Opportunity
How might we create a safe, supportive space for UW students to share ideas and find collaborators with aligned interests and goals?
Ideation
Approach to simple
Based on user interviews, we centered two main focus for primary ideation:
01
Personalization
Style is highly personal, so we prioritized features that adapt to individual tastes.
02
Simplicity
With multiples goals in mind, we explored to create a clean, efficient user flow to avoid overwhelming users.
01
Make it easy to express an idea clearly
Many students struggled to describe early-stage ideas in a way that invited others to join. I sketched input flows that guided users to clarify their concept, scope, and skill needs without overwhelming them.
02
Prioritize relevance in discovery
Students wanted to find collaborators with shared interests — but also wanted to avoid being ignored or ghosted. I explored ways to surface compatible profiles based on shared goals, tools, and availability, while avoiding impersonal filters.
03
Design for low-pressure connection
Reaching out felt awkward for many users. I ideated a “soft connect” feature where users could express interest with context (e.g. “I’m curious about your project” or “I’d love to chat about joining”) to ease cold starts.
Final Design
Introducing IdeaNest
Ideanest was built around a few key features that directly address the core pain points students face when trying to start collaborative projects, shaped by user research and iterated through multiple rounds of feedback to ensure clarity, relevance, and ease of use.
Smart Discovery
& Filtering
A scrollable project feed paired with keyword search and multi-criteria filters (e.g. topic, position, duration) helps students quickly find relevant projects and collaborators.
Approachable
Communication
To lower the barrier of reaching out, Ideanest combines guided connection prompts with built-in messaging. Students can express interest naturally and continue conversations through one-on-one or group chats — all in one place.
Make Profiles
Your Stage
Profiles highlight not just skills but also interests, working styles, and past projects. This helps build credibility and makes it easier to spot potential fit at a glance.
Save Now, Act Later
A simple “Favorite” feature lets users bookmark projects they’re interested in, encouraging exploration without the pressure to commit right away.
