Kindred
A responsive and user-friendly design for a conversational AI tool aimed at helping alumni reconnect with their organizations. The experience is designed to feel personal and approachable, fostering meaningful engagement through smart, dialogue-driven interactions.
PROCESS HIGHLIGHTS
Design challenge and responsibilities overview
Challenge
Design a fully responsive intake survey form powered by AI.
Opportunity
To design an engaging intake survey that strengthens the connection between organizations and alumni, while delivering clear, personalized value to each alumni participant.
Timeline
3/24/2025 - 4/11/2025
19 Days
Role
Lead UX Designer
UX Researcher
Responsibility
UX Research
UX/UI Browser Design
Prototyping
Tools
Figma
Slack
BACKGROUND
The Why
We’re building this project to help bridge the gap between alumni and the organizations that supported their early career development. While many workforce programs are effective at teaching hard skills, they often fall short in fostering long-term relationships and social capital—critical components for professional growth. Kindred aims to fill that gap by creating a conversational, AI-powered platform that reconnects alumni with their networks through dynamic, personalized interactions. This not only delivers immediate value to alumni participants but also equips organizations with meaningful insights to better support and match their graduates.
The Process
1
Research
Identifying Problems
Competitor Analysis
User Interviews
2
Synthesis
Affinity Mapping
User Persona
Task Flow
3
Ideation
Sketching
Low-Fidelity
Mid-Fidelity
4
Design
High-Fidelity
UI for Launch
5
Reflection
User Feedback
Next Steps
RESEARCH
Initial Problem Discovery
The main problem we aim to address is the lack of meaningful, ongoing engagement between alumni and the organizations that trained them. While many workforce development programs excel at teaching technical skills, they often lose contact with alumni after graduation—leaving both parties without insight or connection. Organizations struggle to re-engage alumni in ways that feel timely, personalized, or valuable, while alumni—often busy and past the initial transition—are unlikely to adopt new tools unless they provide immediate relevance and support.
This disconnect is especially problematic when it comes to building social capital, navigating career growth, and accessing networks post-program. Traditional surveys or outreach methods fail to surface the nuance of alumni experiences or offer real-time, tailored guidance. As a result, organizations miss opportunities to provide better mentorship, networking, and career resources—while alumni miss out on support systems that could accelerate their paths.
This project reimagines how alumni engagement can look when powered by AI and rooted in mutual value. By combining an intuitive, conversational intake flow with personalized follow-up, we aim to help organizations gather meaningful alumni insights while giving alumni something in return: clarity, connections, and actionable next steps.
RESEARCH
Competitive Analysis
This competitive analysis highlights key usability gaps and strengths across alumni engagement platforms like Boardy, Hivebrite, TalkHiring, Prentus, and Protopia. Common issues include impersonal tone, mechanical conversation flows, confusing UI patterns, and lack of trust-building elements. While some tools struggle with natural communication and visual clarity, others—like Prentus and Protopia—stand out for their clean navigation, early career support, and human-centered design. AI integration varies in effectiveness, with Boardy and Prentus offering more tailored, supportive experiences. These insights help inform Kindred’s opportunity to differentiate through intuitive interaction design, meaningful personalization, and a stronger sense of trust and warmth.
RESEARCH
Understanding our Users
To address the challenges around alumni engagement, we aimed to gain a deeper understanding of how bootcamp alumni interact with their former organizations after graduation. To do so, we conducted 6 interviews with alumni who completed workforce development programs and are currently navigating the early stages of their careers. These conversations helped us uncover behavioral patterns, needs, and pain points around staying connected with their training organizations. Our objectives were to:
Understand how alumni perceive and engage with their former programs post-graduation
Identify what motivates alumni to re-engage or stay disconnected
Explore barriers to using new tools or platforms for professional development
Uncover opportunities to make the intake process feel more personal, valuable, and worth their time
Determine how AI-powered interactions can build trust and support alumni in their career journeys
RESEARCH
How Might We's
After conducting my research, I honed in on a few guiding questions:
How might we re-engage alumni who have lost contact with their bootcamp organizations in a way that feels personal, relevant, and low-effort?
How might we use AI to facilitate meaningful conversations that surface alumni needs while also building trust and comfort with the technology?
How might we help organizations better understand and support alumni by collecting rich, dynamic data through a more human and conversational intake process?
How might we reduce the emotional and logistical barriers alumni face when trying to reconnect with their network or seek career support?
How might we design an experience that delivers immediate, tangible value to alumni—such as personalized insights, mentorship matches, or next steps—while fostering long-term engagement?
SYNTHESIS
Affinity Mapping
After conducting user interviews and competitor analysis, I created an affinity map to identify users' common desires and pain points. This map serves as a guide for designing the ticketing app, focusing on addressing and improving user experiences based on insights gathered from user interviews and competitor analysis.
KEY FINDINGS
These insights emphasize the importance of building personalized, human-centered, and supportive experiences that help alumni feel seen, connected, and guided in their ongoing career journey.
SYNTHESIS
User Persona
I developed a user persona to identify the ideal user who would gain the most value from a platform designed to reconnect alumni with career support through AI-driven conversations. This process allowed me to focus on the goals, needs, and frustrations of a motivated, early-career professional seeking meaningful mentorship, authentic connections, and accessible guidance beyond generic networking tools.
SYNTHESIS
User Journey
I developed this user journey to map the emotional and behavioral experience of a recent coding bootcamp graduate navigating career transitions and exploring support through Kindred. This visualization allowed me to identify key moments of motivation, burnout, uncertainty, and renewed optimism as users move from graduation to industry re-entry. By tracing this journey—from early excitement, through job search struggles, to AI-guided mentorship—this map highlights the critical need for timely, human-centered interventions that reduce friction and build confidence at pivotal stages.
SYNTHESIS
Task Flow
This flow captures the journey from initial email outreach through intake conversations, artifact creation, and ultimately forming a meaningful professional match. It highlights decision points such as opting into LinkedIn syncing, confirming data accuracy, and choosing whether to connect. By outlining both linear and branching paths—including points where users can loop back for clarity or exit the platform—this map reveals opportunities to streamline onboarding, reinforce trust, and ensure users receive timely, personalized value through smart, guided interactions.
IDEATION
Mid-Fidelity
Our "Ugly Duckling" stage was dedicated to ensuring that the UX of our app aligns with the users' needs in terms of usability and functionality. Here are some of the wireframes:
FINAL DESIGN
High-Fidelity
In our final design decisions, we prioritized the development of the initial intake survey, AI-powered practice conversations, and the Smart Connection feature. We also introduced innovative functionalities that go beyond those typically found in conventional intake surveys.
Intake Survey
For the Intake Survey experience, our design approach centered around reducing friction and building trust from the very first interaction. Users are welcomed with a clean, branded landing screen and offered the option to connect via LinkedIn, streamlining the login process while fostering a sense of professionalism. The transition into the intake flow is intentionally soft and conversational, guided by an AI-driven dialogue that uses natural language to ask reflective questions about the user’s current career state. This method replaces traditional static forms with a more humanized voice interaction, making the experience feel personal and engaging.
The animated visual cues during voice input signal active listening, enhancing clarity and user comfort during speech-based interaction. As the conversation progresses, the system compiles insights into a summarized feedback report. This functionality is designed to surface useful self-reflections without requiring users to sift through transcripts.
Practice Conversation
For the Practice Conversation feature, our design decisions centered around creating a supportive, realistic, and low-pressure environment for users to build confidence in their professional communication skills. The initial screen provides clear context and guidance, including the AI partner’s background and conversation goals—designed to set expectations. The call interface mimics real-life phone calls, complete with visual cues and a countdown timer, helping users acclimate to the pacing and format of live interactions.
Post-conversation, the Reflect & Reset screens offer personalized feedback, highlighting specific strengths and areas for growth. We introduced audio playback and segmented analysis of user responses—such as tone, clarity, and confidence—making the feedback actionable and measurable. This granular approach was inspired by user feedback requesting more concrete ways to self-improve. The interface remains visually clean and encouraging, with clear pathways to repeat practice sessions, reinforcing a growth mindset without overwhelming the user. Overall, the flow supports skill-building through repetition, reflection, and realistic simulation.
Smart Connection
In designing the Smart Connection feature, we focused on creating a streamlined and intuitive experience that supports meaningful networking between job seekers and mentors. The first screen emphasizes user choice, allowing users to browse potential matches with clear role labels and professional photos—an intentional decision based on our research that showed users are more likely to engage when they can easily scan and recognize relevant profiles. The second screen highlights a skill-tagging system and a chronological work history view, enabling users to quickly assess expertise and background. Finally, the scheduling interface prioritizes flexibility and ease of use, presenting available time slots in a clean, touch-friendly layout.
Final Designs
High Fidelity Prototyping
After completing this case study, I reflected on how much stronger I have become as a designer. I employed more technical techniques such as auto-layout, grids, and others, making my designs more consistent and structured. Additionally, I have grown as an interaction designer by practicing prototyping how users would realistically click certain buttons and anticipate their interactions. However, I believe the most significant growth for me was in my design thinking. I now approach design with a stronger focus on finding details for improvement and incorporating more UX thinking before diving into designs. I eagerly anticipate the next project I undertake!
Intake Survey/Practice Conversations
In prototyping the Intake Survey and Practice Conversations, we focused on transforming a typically static and impersonal process into a conversational, voice-driven experience.
Smart Connection
For Smart Connection, we prototyped a streamlined mentor-matching and scheduling flow to test how users browse, select, and engage with potential career guides.
REFLECTIONS
Conclusion
Completing this case study was a turning point in my growth as a designer, especially as I explored the integration of AI into the user experience. Designing with AI challenged me to think beyond static flows, it required anticipating dynamic interactions, context-aware responses, and the nuanced ways users might engage with conversational or predictive systems.
This pushed me to deepen my UX thinking: identifying areas where AI could truly enhance the experience, while also ensuring it remained intuitive and human-centered.
More than anything, this project reshaped how I approach design challenges. I now begin with broader systems thinking and ethical considerations before diving into wireframes or visuals. I'm excited to keep building on this experience and continue exploring the intersection of AI and thoughtful design.