Lumos
UX Laurier design-a-thon was a weekend long event competing with over 500+ designers. We created Lumos, which is designed to make creative experiences more accessible and discoverable, as well as motivating creatives dive deeper into their passions.
Branding, Prototyping, User Flows, User Research
4 Designers
March 2023
48 hours
What kills creativity?
With most social interactions happening online nowadays rather than face-to-face, this reduces the spontaneous and unstructured discussions that people need to spark new ideas, get inspired and be creative.
We believe that with more hands-on activities and opportunities accessible, it can push people to experiment in new interests and to boost creativity needed within people’s lives.
How might we create an experience that makes it easier for adults to discover their hidden creativity and passions?
We conducted some generative user research by releasing surveys to figure out reasons on what exactly is stopping young adults or adults today from discovering new passions or exploring creative fields.
When asked what is stopping users from reaching out to new people or hobbies, motivation was the biggest role in play. Out of 53 responses, 69.8% responded with "low motivation" being a factor, and 60.4% responded with a lack of time in their schedule.
Many others said that having others to pursue passions and having an inherent want towards the passion is essential. And so, after analyzing this data we concluded with 2 main pain points:
Low motivation to find new opportunities
and
Lack of discovery & knowledge of hidden creative talents and passions
So how can we address these pain points that are keeping adults from being creative?
Introducing Lumos. An application designed to bring light to your hidden passions and spark your creativity with others. Lumos is designed to make creative experiences more accessible and discoverable, as well as motivating creatives dive deeper into their passions. There are two essential features of the app that provide solutions to both of the pain points mentioned earlier.
Matchmaking Feature:
A speed friending or collaborating matchmaking feature to meet other people with similar interests and hobbies, with the same skill level as you.
Not only does this help users find Potential Projects & Collaboration Opportunities, it creates networks that motivate each other to pursue any hesitant aspirations.
Discover Events:
Displays events or workshops around you based on your interests that you might want to attend. This helps spark curiosity! Making it easier for people to discover and start on new interests.
What makes Lumos unique?
You might be thinking, how does this differentiate from other social media apps like Instagram, where we can pop a DM or friend request to similar people anyway? Well, in the design process of both solutions, we really wanted to emphasize on call-to-actions that user can act upon to jumpstart their creative journey and passions.
Main Takeaways…
Time Management
Despite pulling an all-nighter, we found ourselves rushing to finish certain sections. I learned that proper delegation of tasks and scheduling with reasonable workloads was important when it came to design-a-thons. Looking back, I wish we spent less time focusing on concepts & branding, and more time actually fleshing out the designs.
More is not always better
Looking back, I now feel like if we focused more on a niche and narrower pain point, we could've had a more impactful solution or design for the problem statement given. I realized what we were going for was too broad- and trying to solve two really big pain points was going too far, and should have cut it down more.
Proper sleep & balance
No matter how much you want to do well on something, nothing is worth sacrificing your sleep and mental health over. At the end of the day, these events exist to help you grow, learn, and gain something out of it. It's not the end of the world.