MIT COVID-19 VIRTUAL HACKATHON:
MOOSE (Mind Opening Online Skills Exchange)
TIME-BANKED ONLINE SKILLS EXCHANGE PLATFORM
OVERVIEW
Tools: Figma, Miro, Google Drive, Zoom, Slack
Deliverables: User Research, Userflows, Wireframing, Prototyping
MIT hosted a virtual hackathon inviting people from all over the world to take action on the
COVID-19 crisis. There were 1500+ participants and 200+ teams. There were 10 different tracks
we were randomly assigned to that targeted different problems that have come up due to COVID-19.
My team placed top 4 within our track and was awarded $500 as well as resources and mentorship
to further develop our idea!
PROBLEM
Negative impact of social distancing and quarantines: There is an increase in feelings of loneliness
and depression due to self-isolation and decline in economy. How might we improve people's mental
well-being and quality of life while still maintaining physical distance from others to slow the spread
of the coronavirus?
SOLUTION
A time-banked online skills exchange platform where people can meet virtually and teach
each other things they are interested in. In this way, those that are isolated alone at home are still
able to socialize, feel connected, and meet new people while also being productive with their time by
learning something new. People who spend time teaching a skill can earn “time tokens” as a currency to
purchase other skills. This incentivizes users to create a community where everyone contributes as well
as consumes.
MY TEAM
My team consisted of 7 people from all over the world -- California, Texas, Michigan,
Canada, Spain, and India. We had a diverse set of backgrounds including statistical
programming, physics, public policy, human rights, UX design, computer science, medicine,
and research.
MY ROLE
My responsibilities were to understand our target user, design userflows, wireframes,
medium fidelity mockups, and a clickable prototype to showcase in our final pitch presentation.
Due to COVID-19, there has been a 19% increase in feelings of loneliness and
depression and an increase in purchases of alcohol.
CHALLENGES
Different time zones
Everyone sacrificed sleep in order to spend as many waking
hours working together as possible.
I slept a total of about 6 hours that weekend!
Communicating virtually
For brainstorming, we used Miro to replace physical sticky-notes.
We used Google drive to organize documents and our pitch deck.
I used Figma for design.
We used Zoom and Slack for communication.
We jumped on Zoom calls to clarify the problem statement and
solution idea, update what each person was working on and their progress,
and address any roadblocks.
It was essentially like having weekly scrum meetings but compacted
within 48 hours!
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Since there are plenty of online educational and class-type platforms that
already exist such as Skillshare, Coursera, and Udemy, we considered integrating
our idea with an existing platform.
Pros
Established user base
Mature platform where people can share and learn through video
Cons
Teaching and learning largely one-sided because videos are prerecorded
then uploaded
Lacks intimacy and not interactive
Pay for classes with money
We wanted to introduce time-banking especially because money can be
tight right now for a lot of people.
Exchanging time spent teaching for "time tokens" that can be used to
learn something encourages people to use the platform to not only learn
from others but also teach a skill in order to foster an online community
to combat feelings of loneliness when people are isolated.
Because we wanted to maintain our unique business model of exchanging time for
skills, we decided not to pursue integrating with existing platforms and decided
to build our platform from scratch.
WIREFRAMES
Landing Page
Set Preferences & Create Profile
Choose a Skill to Learn
Learn & Rate Your Experience
Your Skill Requests
MEDIUM FIDELITY MOCKUPS
On the landing page, you can explore what skills are available to
learn so you can see the potential value of the platform before
signing up and creating a profile.
When you sign up, you can indicate your preferences by entering what
you're interested in learning and if you have any skills you're willing
to teach. The explore page will then be tailored towards your preferences.
You can also indicate if you prefer to learn one-on-one, in groups, or both.
Request to learn a skill from someone by choosing a time from their calendar.
Wait for your request to be approved.
If you've listed skills to teach, you will see requests from other users who
want to learn your skill. Accept their request to add it to your calendar.
When it's time to teach, you can click on the event in your calendar to start
teaching through video conference call. When the call is over, you can rate
your experience with the student and the student will be able to rate you.
You can find additional mental health resources if you're seeking more professional
assistance.
NEXT STEPS
Since we placed top 4 in our track, we were given resources to further develop
our idea.
Currently, I am leading the market research to gauge people's interest and need.
Created a survey on SurveyMonkey
Hoping to get at least 100 responses to get a good signal
Conduct user interviews if we have more questions
The rest of the team is developing a business plan, looking for funding opportunities,
and looking into different ways to integrate video calls while building the web app.
I will work with the developer to implement my designs.
