CASE STUDY
Brothr 79
Brothr 79 is composed of a small team that is currently working on developing a platform for Lambda Sigma Upsilon Latino Fraternity Incorporated, to practice Product Design/Development skill-sets through problem solving leveraging real users.
đź‘‹ HEY
This was a project I completed as a member of the fraternity, Lambda Sigma Upsilon Latino Fraternity Incorporated and wanted to take this opportunity to get more practice with iOS development and mobile interactions. Most importantly I wanted to take this concept and run with it, and create a more engaging, mobile solution for connecting brothers and expanding on the 4 goals of the fraternity.
A familiar problem
Brothers have expressed difficulties connecting and networking with other brothers within Lambda Sigma Upsilon Latino Fraternity Incorporated. In addition, some alumni brothers lack sense of purpose and career guidance after graduating. My brothers and I currently use apps like GroupMe and Facebook Groups (left) but these have their own goals and are not really tailored for the fraternity. Therefore, there is no “official” means of communication between the brothers, especially one that aligns with out goals, discussed later.
ROLE
Product Designer
Brand Designer
Actual conversation in GroupMe/Facebook looking to connect with a brother.
Research
Goals
  • Learn how people feel about the colors
  • Developethe Color Palette
I started my research by deep diving into the color palette for the app by researching for color and inspiration. Competitors use of colors and and pulling from a wide variety of over 80 photos that were then categorized and put into clusters . To make this clearer and easier to show our testers I created four inspirational mood boards: Dark Ocean, Dark Sky, Light Ocean and Light Sky; all of which were inspired by the brand of the orginization.
RESEARCH COMPONENTS
Color Research
Competitive Analysis
After down selecting the colors from the mood boards, I developed a grid like color system that embodied the four color schemes from the pre-design that inspires the dark and light mode directions in the circular grid. A circular grid would give a clearer view for stake holders and the team to see how these colors may work together.
Design System
The complex nature of the app necessitated more than 50 screens covering user on-boarding, dashboard setup, support and search engine features like keyword and geo-location discovery. To maintain consistency and ensure efficient design to dev handover, I developed an evolved color palette  and a modular design system based on reusable components and their states, such as cards, nibs, list items, and controls. Every component can be rearranged and combined with others while maintaining design consistency and recognizable UI patterns for the user.
Brothr 79 app,
built around fraternal experience
To redefine the network and intricacies of a fraternity, we asked our users to define what they felt about the 4 goals of the fraternity. Also due to the privacy of fraternities and that roadblock we needed to be sensitive to that fact.

From a series of prototypes, we landed on a tab-based app architecture, each dedicated to a specific aspect of the fraternity: networking, connecting, being represented, privacy controls, and a dashboard with an overview of recent user activity with the fraternity. A list-based UI allowed to easily optimize scannability and summarize the content.
An immersive search engine
At the top of the app’s most requested features was some form of search engine. Our users wanted to be able to find brothers based on their needs and request, quickly and efficiently. The discoverability had to be simple, yet flexible enough to support individualized requests (e.g. Dominican, Irish, mechanical engineer, comic books), and attach those to specific profiles.

Drawing on our conversations with the brothers, we understood the unique connection points within the brotherhood, each brother with their interests, hobbies, careers, and passions. One tap interaction allows brothers to edit their connecting points by editing their tags and discoverability in the fraternity as a whole.
Next steps
After each new design iteration it’s important to test that design again with users. The design process is an ongoing one, and there’s always room for improvement. The next step for this project would be to implement changes based on the customer journey experience testing. Have live testing with brothers of the fraternity that were a part of our focus groups.
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