UX DESIGN INTERNSHIP • 6 MONTHS

Dancejo is an early-stage B2C SaaS start-up that aims to build an online dance platform to virtually teach and learn dance. 

Overview 

About the startup
Dancejo is an early-stage B2C SaaS start-up with a small team of 12 people. The core product focuses on improving the experience of teaching dance online. The platform helps dancers build professional school profiles, host their dance school online, manage students and batches and share assignment videos after every class. 

About the team 
During my internship, it was a small, cross-disciplinary team of 12 people. I worked closely with founders, product managers, engineers, and the marketing team.

Role 🙋‍♀️

UX Design intern

Duration ⌛

6 months, October 2020 - March 2021

Tools 🛠️

Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Miro

I got the opportunity to do a bit of everything 👩‍💻

Being the only UX designer on the team, I wore multiple hats and handled a variety of responsibilities.

User research and interviews 

• Conducted user interviews and interacted with early adopters to understand product goals and vision

• Hosted product demos for potential users 

• Conducted usability testing sessions with existing product users to improve the core product experience

Visual design

• Created custom illustrations and revamped the company's landing page

• Designed iconography for the player panel

• Redesigned the user interface by changing the colors and typography

• Proposed designs for dark theme

Product design 

• Participated in design sprints and helped define product requirements and strategy

• Shipped new features based on customer feedback for both web and mobile app

• Designed user flows, wireframes, and high fidelity responsive prototypes

• Assisted the Product Manager in defining the product roadmap and maintain the product backlog

Design system

• Initially, developed a comprehensive UI style guide for the initial stages of the product 

• Later, established a design system and created reusable components for faster development by following Brad Frost's Atomic Design principles

One of the features that I enjoyed working on the most —

Optimizing the Dancejo player experience for mobiles

What is the Dancejo web practice player?

The practice player has unique features to practice dance online. Any learner can practice next to the dance instructor's pre-recorded video by seeing their video side by side. The player features allow users to flip the video right and left, see their own video and allow users to learn in slow motion. Users can also record their dance routine and submit it to their dance instructor for feedback. 

Defining the problem

How might we ensure the best practice experience on a mobile?

How might we optimize the usage of space on a smaller screen?

Understanding how a user interacts with the mobile while learning or practicing dance

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• Users generally place their mobiles 2-3 ft. away from where they are dancing

• They record their videos and then come close to see their recording.

• They usually record multiple videos at the same time 

• The back camera captures higher quality video than the front camera, so sometimes users dance while facing the phone's backside. 

• Users occasionally ask someone else to record the video for them. 

Approach taken based on insights

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• Considering the mobile device can be used in two modes, portrait and landscape - the first step is to identify the most optimized ways of showing two videos parallelly on a small screen 

• The playback of the recording should be quick and easily accessible because users would keep coming back to the mobile to view their recording multiple times in one session. 

Establishing the user flow