ASU Baobab chat redesign
Research and rapid prototyping on the Mastercard Foundation Baobab Platform, surfacing why 90% of conversations were leaving the product, and shipping a prototype scholars rated 8–10/10.
Prototype of the redesigned chat experience. Conversations, workgroups, and call affordances tested with 20+ scholars.
About this project
Baobab is the Mastercard Foundation's digital community for young African leaders, powered by Arizona State University. It's an inclusive social, professional, and learning platform for current participants and alumni of Mastercard Foundation programs, where scholars network across the continent and the diaspora, find curated jobs and scholarships, take courses in leadership and entrepreneurship, connect with mentors through 1:1s and Ask-Me-Anythings, and gather at live events. The francophone community alone has grown past 700 members since 2021.
As Product / UX Researcher on the platform, I led comprehensive user research with 20+ scholars to identify critical communication pain points in the chat feature, revealing that 90% of conversations had migrated off-platform due to fundamental functionality gaps.
I prioritized the highest-impact user needs: real-time notifications, active status, and career-based discovery, and rapidly prototyped solutions in Next.js with Claude Code, iterating across agile sprints.
Validating the prototype with users surfaced 8–10/10 satisfaction, with explicit feedback that it surpassed LinkedIn for professional networking. The output was a clear MVP roadmap focused on high-impact features (e.g. email notifications with sender names) projected to lift engagement 3–5× and cut conversation abandonment by 80%.