BrainStation: Cortex

– An Exclusive Professional Network

 

DURATION: 8 weeks (01/23 - 03/23)

MY ROLE: Product Manager, User Researcher, UX/UI Designer

TEAM MEMBERS: Kajol, Shivam, Tanner & Paras

METHODOLOGIES: Primary & Secondary Research, Wireframing, Prototyping

TOOLS: Miro, Adobe Creative Suite

What we did:
1. Defining Problems
2. Research

3. Value Proposition

4. MVP

To empower the BrainStation community in achieving their professional goals

For this case study our client is BrainStation and the problems our product aims to solve are the following:

  • BrainStation students have limited community resources to bridge the gap between course completion and employment.

  • BrainStation alumni desire a way to stay integrated with the community.

  • BrainStation hiring partners don’t have an efficient way of connecting to qualified candidates.

 

Our research was critical to ensuring we achieve product market fit. The personas for this product include BrainStation’s current students, alumni and hiring partners. Each persona is unique and when viewed together, they will illustrate intersecting goals and frustrations where this product provides a solution.

Our proposed product is a professional networking platform exclusive to the BrainStation community. The full product would likely be hosted on the BrainStation website. Future versions may take shape as an app for convenience on mobile devices, similar to LinkedIn which is our main competion in this space.

The tables below compare where our proposed product will provide our users with features that they can or cannot access through another product or service.

Student & Alumni Value Proposition

Hiring Partner Value Propsition

This is our lean MVP proposal - A landing page where BrainStation’s community members can sign up to receive emails about hiring information, community events, peer-to-peer mentoring opportunities, and more. The goal here is to test if the value proposition achieves product market fit while reducing as much cost for design and development as possible. Explore our Lean MVP Canvas below for more details and information.

Lean MVP Canvas

Lean MVP Mockup

Product Positioning

Below is a summary of our go-to-market product positioning.

Success Metrics

These are the metrics that would indicate success for our proposed Lean MVP. In many cases, the Success Threshold would be seen as overly ambitious and likely too high to reach. We approached these predictions ambitiously with BrainStation’s current value proposition in mind. BrainStation already offers access to professional resources for our customers, this MVP offers a streamlined hub to achieve those professional goals. For this reason, we predict the established community conversion rate would be high.

When developing a product from scratch for an existing company, it is important to consider the type of community they have already established and how to compliment what already exists. I have found the key to this is lots of relevant research and having empathy for their community.