This project is part of my journey to enhance my product management skills by developing a communication and networking dashboard for INSAID students. By identifying pain points and proposing innovative features, I’m applying critical PM skills like problem identification, feature prioritization, creating wireframes and user-centric design.
This project is an initiative to design a communication and networking dashboard for INSAID students, focusing on students interested in Data Science and Product Management. The dashboard is intended to be a one-stop solution where students can connect with peers, access valuable resources, and advance their careers by building meaningful relationships. It addresses the need to move away from third-party platforms like WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Telegram by providing superior features and networking capabilities.
Students currently rely on third-party apps and websites to interact with their peers, build networks, and access learning materials. This leads to fragmented communication and a lack of cohesive networking within the INSAID student community.
- Provide a centralized platform for students to access important information and build networks with like-minded individuals.
- Enable seamless interaction and collaboration among students interested in Data Science and Product Management.
- Develop a portal that simplifies access to resources such as blogs, videos, courses, and chat options to facilitate learning and career advancement.
This project focuses on creating a communication dashboard for students interested in Data Science and Product Management. It comprises five wireframes, each illustrating different features and purposes to collectively address the problem statement. The dashboard is accessible from the Network Forum on the INSAID website.
Feature: Choose between Data Science and Product Management to access tailored resources and networks.
- This will enable the students to decide between the two mentioned fields and take them to their respective pages.
- In this way, it would be easier to get the information in the most precise manner.
Feature: Access various sections like Blogs, Posts, Newsletters, Books, and Videos.
- On the left sidebar, the user can select between the above-mentioned options to choose between the field of interest.
- This section contains the latest and most trending information about the topic.
- The default page is Blogs, and the user can navigate to other sections or pages by clicking on the text.
- The idea is to provide various links, documents, video links(including documentaries, YouTube videos, etc.), book links, posts, etc., of the respective topics in a single place. This makes student’s work easy, and they don’t have to spend time finding resources.
Feature: Feature to share, like or dislike a post.
- This wireframe contains blogs. Users can share the post with their peers if they find something interesting.
- They even have the feature to like or dislike a post as per their needs.
Feature: The second taskbar contains the Search feature. It further has options to choose among People, Courses and Chat.
- With the help of the search feature, students can easily find what they are looking for by typing some keywords.
- On selecting ‘People’, it will redirect the user to the ‘People’ page which is explained in the 3rd wireframe.
- On selecting ‘Courses’, it will redirect the user to the ‘Courses’ page which is explained in the 4th wireframe.
- On selecting ‘Chat’, it will redirect the user to the ‘Chat’ page which is explained in the 5th wireframe.
Feature: Feature to choose among different people who have already signed in.
- It displays the name, designation, highest level of qualification, posts uploaded by them, certifications, chat button, and the INSAID rating.
- This feature allows the candidate to make a cogent decision and connect with the right person.
- The INSAID rating makes it more convenient to get to a decision. The INSAID team gives the rating based on the data and the user's activities.
Feature: The chat button takes the user to the Chat section explained in the 5th wireframe.
Feature: This helps the students to choose between different courses and make the right decision.
- It displays the course name, which organization is hosting the course/program, and the basic information to know what the course will include.
- The INSAID rating can again aid the students to make the right decision. The INSAID team gives the rating based on the data and the user's activities.
Feature: The Enroll button will take the students to the actual course page if INSAID hosts it or will redirect the user to the respective website.
Feature: This page allows the student to interact with different fellow batchmates and colleagues.
- It includes messaging features, video calling, voice calling, forming a group, giving a referral to someone, attachments, etc.
- The dropdown button on the second taskbar allows the user to search (in the chat), change wallpaper and block the user.
- Students can refer the person to someone else in the community to help them get further in their career.
The main idea is to provide a one-stop solution to networking and connecting with the people sharing similar interests. Come up with a solution so that students don’t have to rely on third-party apps/websites such as WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Telegram in particular.
To get the X-factor out of our product, we need to deliver something that the above-mentioned companies are not providing or lacking. For this, we should focus our attention on the drawbacks of these networking platforms.
WhatsApp is infamous for bad or poor-quality photos and videos sent or uploaded. We should ensure that the quality of our portal is not degraded. It also doesn’t allow files >16 MB to be sent. We have to make it accessible to share files >16 MB.
LinkedIn has a feature of restricted search. It doesn’t allow a user to search endlessly; instead, it has a cap on its search number. Thereby prompting the user to get a premium account. We should not keep any such restrictions on the search. At the same time we should not be biased with the students who have enrolled in the INSAID courses as well. This will increase the popularity of our website, and students will get what they are looking for without any hassle. Apart from this, once a student has logged into our website, it will enable fellow students to chat with them, and in this way, they don’t have to wait for people to accept their connection requests, unlike LinkedIn users.
Telegram is famous for sharing large files, and many groups are available on it. They, however, have some files that are corrupted and some that are not downloadable. We must ensure that this doesn’t happen on our website.
- Risk: Difficulty in uploading large files.
- Mitigation: Provide the option to share large files through Google Drive links.