The Team
“Brainiac” was created by six Global Business and Digital Arts second year students at the University of Waterloo who value communication and collaboration for creative projects. Sarah, Maleigh, Elyssa, Cassidy, Tomi, and Sam came together in their GBDA 210 Intro to User Experience Design class to propose this innovative platform.
Individual Strength's
Our team is compiled of six different people with a range of strengths and weaknesses. We have a team of designers, writers, project managers, and artists all committed to solving a problem we’ve discovered through our academic experiences. Having our entire team in the same program was convenient as we were all on the same page with our studies. Four of the six team members live together, therefore it was easy to communicate and collaborate further with this concept especially due to our remote learning situation. We all recognized each one of us had preferences and assets in certain sections of this project so our work highlights our strengths as a team.
Problem Statement
Upon creating this platform we wanted to solve a problem every student, teacher, or business professional faces when it comes to producing quality group work. Through user surveys and personal experience, we found the individuals previously listed are struggling to keep their work synched up while having to use multiple platforms for one project. Projects now require, messaging, working documents, group calls, and other user friendly functions when they’re based in a virtual setting. There has yet to be a single platform with all of these essential components for online collaborative work.
In lieu of this, we came up with a question to help us get started on a solution:
“How might we create a virtual space in which teams can collaborate effectively and comfortably?”
and thus Brainiac was born!
Ideation & Process
Our experience with remote learning during the current global pandemic has come to our advantage for this platform design. About a month into classes, we realized we were using at least five platforms to support our collaborative work which is an essential part of our program. We thought, wouldn’t it be great if we had everything in one place to simplify and organize our work? Even the process of pitching this project altogether was challenging as we were communicating and producing work through Instagram, Coffee and Design, Zoom, Google Drive, Canva, and Figma. Before diving in we had to compile a series of questions, steps, comments, and ideas so we could create the most user friendly platform for our prospective audience/users. We had to keep in mind that even though our users are used to having their work spread out all over the internet, designing a clean and cohesive website could simplify anybody’s personal, academic, and professional life.
Inspiration & Stakeholders
“Brainac” takes inspiration from a collusion of platforms, specifically adopting and adapting key factors we felt students, teachers, and business professionals would benefit from with their collaborative work. Our goal was to recognize problems in the virtual academic world and work to solve them in a simple way; not just for our own benefit, but for others who also value communication and collaboration with their online projects.
Brainiac - Final Home Page
Brainiac - Figma Frames
