Problem
Team Excel helps schools and nonprofit organizations get students off the sidelines and into the game by applying innovative solutions and leveraging the power of teamwork. Their model makes student success fun, engaging, and results driven. Working with Start-Up Virginia out of a Capital One incubator space, they reached out for help.
They approached Capital One for help on re-branding, marketing and taking their web site into a cross platform application. Through the community office, a team was pulled together from Brand to work on their identity and marketing strategy. Next was to pull together a tech team to work on the native application. Several developers and tech leads on the consumer card servicing team were recruited to help. Having previously worked with several of these developers, they asked me to help with the UX and UI design of the app.
The assembled dev team used this as an opportunity to learn Flutter, an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. They wanted to use it to create a cross platform app for iOS and Android.
Action
Meeting with the Team Excel leadership, we walked through their existing web experience. It’s based on fantasy sports. But here, a school could create a league, teachers or coaches could then create teams and from there students could compete based on various criteria such as grades, attendance, community service, etc. earning points along the way.
While the brand team worked on the new identity, I got started wire framing. The developers asked that I start with Android. I worked through several ideations that were then presented to Team Excel and the C1 team. As a group we talked through the different approaches, addressed edge cases, identified gaps in their web experience and ultimately settled on the flows above.
Results
We launched MVP with the original branding. The app was built to use OS based components. So Android used the blue app bar just as iOS used a blue nav bar. They would also use their default OS font. Once the new branding and marketing campaign was complete, the app was reskinned with the new green and blue. Team Excel is continuing to grow.
Skills
- UX design
- UX strategy
- Wire framing
- UI design
- Rapid ideation
- Android
- iOS
- Figma