Hylo is a web and mobile community platform designed for purpose-driven groups to coordinate, communicate, and collaborate. It is operated as a not-for-profit, open-source “technology commons” rather than an ad- or data-driven social network.
In a nutshell, what we were attempting to build back in 2015 was an alternative to Facebook Groups that would be free of the Facebook platform. So ad-free, open source and built primarily with the needs of purpose-driven groups in mind.
This app still exists today and is presently stewarded by the Terran Collective.
We were a small team of four and my initial role was as a Frontend Developer. Within 6 months of joining the company, and after finishing a General Assembly course on UX, I moved into a UX Engineer role which focused primarily on research, collecting user feedback, A/B testing, and feature development.
In practice, what did this mean?
Besides than filling our office with sticky notes 😂 (pictured below), my role was to run a UX feedback program, help architect an user onboarding experience, integrate A/B testing into the app, and provide actionable insights to be translated into feature direction.
User Experience Research
For our UX discovery program, I recruited and conducted 50 full interviews (approximately 100 interviews including less formal interviews) with users. The user pool consisted of members of our communities (including The Hub Oakland) and the community leaders of our onboarded communities.
My role was to collect feedback on the app experience and digest said feedback into insights. I found it useful to create boards for the team to help us stay focused.
On this board, I summarized aspects of the platform.
Insights from this board: