The MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge was a yearly event with the goal of finding people around the world who are capable of seeing the world's problems and finding innovative solutions. So how exactly do you find an innovative solution for people who's jobs are to literally find other people to do that exact thing? Very carefully. As part of the MIT IIC project, they needed a brand new marketing site that was capable of being redesigned every year to fit the new motif they wanted, as well as connect to a custom application capable of managing the entries to the challenge which go through several stages like submission, review, and final results. The app and website needed to work for an international audience of admins, regional admins, reviewers, and registrants, which means a lot of different screens and a lot of different types of people.
The challenge of the Innovation Challenge did prove to be challenging (did I say challenge enough?), with its 4 different user types for the custom app, even more expected user types for the marketing site, and the need to cater to the whole world, however the challenge was met. For the marketing site the focus was on delivering the latest phase of the challenge, news around it, a breakdown of what to expect per region, leadership, and a way to view previous winners. What came together was a color-coded website with content being tied to each region. That content included pages, people, and previous entries. As the challenge progressed, the next deadline for each region would appear on the homepage as well as each region's landing page.
Once a user became a registrant, they were able to start work on their entry through the IIC Challenge Application. There, registrants filled out their application, answer the necessary questions, and even uploading photos and videos for their entry. On the other side, administrators were able to review the progress of the challenge via dashboards. The super admins were able to view the entire challenge at once, while regional admins were focused on one particular part of the world. Again, we employed color coding for the super admins so that they could quickly identify which region they were looking at and understand the breakdown of registrants and how many were yet to complete their applications. The insight afforded through the system allowed for the administrators of the challenge to reach out to the areas that were underrepresented and to make sure that the challenge was as inclusive as possible.
As another part of the project was to make sure the application could easily be reused from year to year. So, if the following year the regions, the questions, or any other aspect of the challenge required an update, that could be done without affecting the previous year's results. And those changes were make their way through the entire app.
Juggling a multitude of user types is always a challenge (I really need to stop using that word), especially when each one needs a different view. But, it is in that chall-struggle to solve for many different people that you can find certain solutions that work just right. While the application part was a heavy part of the user experience, requiring a whole new design for the marketing site each year was a different sort of beast in itself. However, the basic architecture for the site didn't change much from one year to the next (over the 2 years that I worked on the project), but it did allow for an evolution of the structure to make sure the right elements were in focus, especially as things changed throughout the competition .
