ContactMax
ContactMax is a digital platform that helps you strengthen your professional relationships and become a super networker!
Problem Background
As our work environments have become more remote, it is more important than ever that we find better ways to stay connected and build our professional relationships. While technology like LinkedIn has made it easier to meet new professional contacts, it is left to each person to maintain and nurture those relationships to help reach their goals, whether that be to obtain a new job or deepen their network within their current field.
LinkedIn Newsroom reported that 80% of professionals believe you can elevate your career success through professional networking.
In fact, at least 70% of people got their current job through networking (Source: Payscale). But where do you start? How do you manage and grow your business relationships?
That’s why we created ContactMax. An app that empowers young professionals to organize and grow their business relationships to reach certain goals and become super networkers in the process.
Research Insights
To learn more about the problem, we first conducted a survey and interviewed three people in depth to gain a deeper understanding of how young professionals currently manage and grow their business relationships. Of our 30+ survey respondents, we found that over 80% of them were currently taking steps to grow their network. Through both the survey and the interviews, we uncovered multiple insights.
- While people find expanding their network important, they don’t know how to go about keeping track of business contacts
- Contacts get easily lost or forgotten due to no system
- It is difficult to remember details about each contact
- Many people find it difficult to keep in touch and stay up to date with contacts
Solution Explanation
Our solution, ContactMax, is an app that will empower young professionals to easily keep track and organize their business contacts. Our long term vision of the product will allow users to sync phone, email and LinkedIn contacts to create a hub where they can organize and retain details about each contact, track their activity, measure the success of each relationship, and learn personalized strategies to grow their network.
To determine our MVP, we prioritized our features based on impact and effort and opted to move forward with 3 initial features:
- Syncing or manually adding contacts - This will allow users to quickly add phone contacts and additional information like job details or how you met someone.
- Adding reminders - This is the first step to nurturing business relationships. This feature will allow users to set reminders and help hold themselves accountable to reach out to contacts at a certain time to help progress the relationship.
- Organizing by tags - This will allow users to group and find related contacts quickly and efficiently.
Lofi & Hifi Mockups
Iterative Design Learnings
After creating our high fidelity prototype, we tested on 5 participants to gain feedback on the overall usability of ContactMax. From the testing sessions, we learned that:
- The purpose of tags was not clear and would most likely not be utilized as often as reminders unless the user had a large network
- When users were creating reminders, the ‘Form of Communication’ field was interpreted in different ways
- Users found it difficult to find the full details of contacts
- Most users stated that they would most likely not sync contacts when first going through onboarding for privacy reasons
- Users want to be able to access all details of a particular contact in each reminder
Moving forward, we will be iterating on our designs to alleviate these issues and continue to test our product to ensure a seamless and enjoyable experience for all of our users.
Implementation Details
Where is it hosted?
The backend is currently hosted on AWS using EC2 instance. It has a certificate attached to the url and using a load balancer from AWS. This is the endpoint of the backend https://contactmax.renderhelp.click/health. The code resides in GitHub.
What is your tech stack?
The backend technologies include Golang and MongoDB while the mobile app is designed using Flutter, which mainly uses Dart as the programming language. The user details are stored in MongoDB.
High level journey of a request
One of the main challenges we countered was how to test the mobile application without deploying it on the App store yet since it is still under development. We are able to test it on our individual MacBook, but we also need other members of the team to be able to test as well.
We didn't have any scaling issues while developing the app. The app was deployed on AWS with a lot of resources.
As next steps, we will need to figure out how to test the app in the future during development and setting up a development environment with other members of the team.
Future Steps
We will be continuing to work on ContactMax following our time at Co.Lab, with the hope to release it in the App store in the upcoming months.
We have received great feedback so far and will continue to iterate our designs to ensure we release the best product for our users.
Learnings
Product Manager Learnings:
Nickolas Sneed
Co.Lab was an eye opening experience for me. Through the process of working on Co.Lab, I was able to get an in-depth understanding of how the collaboration process should work when developing a product from 0 to 1.
I gained a more attuned understanding of the work of all of the team members on the team, and have a better understanding of how to navigate time conflicts when working on tight deadlines.
Designer Learnings:
Alex Hartley
Throughout the last eight weeks, I learned the importance of communicating consistently with developers at every stage to ensure the product was viable and that it aligned with my designs.
One of the challenges we faced was prioritizing features and accurately estimating the time it would take to build out. Looking forward, I now have a much better understanding of how to handoff my work seamlessly to developers and how to roll out a product by utilizing an agile work process.
Designer Learnings:
Jo Sturdivant
- Adapting to an Established Team: Joining the team in week 6 of 8 was challenging, as I had to quickly adapt to existing workflows, dynamics, and goals. This mirrors real-world situations where you often integrate into teams mid-project, and flexibility is essential.
- Work-Blocking for Efficiency: With only two weeks to complete the project, I learned the importance of a structured work-blocking system. This approach allowed me to manage my time effectively and meet deadlines under pressure.
- Making Data-Driven Design Decisions: Unlike my past projects, I had to rely on research conducted by others. This was a valuable experience in using pre-existing data to guide design decisions, helping me focus on the core insights without starting from scratch.
Developer Learnings:
Ige Adetokunbo Temitayo
I made new contacts and networked with great people in the program. I learned a lot of tips from Alex, our Product Designer, concerning making designs in Figma and I’m really excited I met Alex because she did some magic which I didn’t believe was possible with Figma.
I have also always wanted to start mobile app development but didn’t have much time. With the help of Co.Lab, I had the opportunity of working on a mobile development project with our other developer, Valence.
This has motivated me to start mobile development. I really had a great experience in Co.Lab and I enjoyed every aspect of the program.
I also learned about managing expectations from our mentor, Dave, which is a great takeaway for me. I cherish every moment and time spent working with my team.
Developer Learnings:
Vanady Beard
&
Valence Fredrick
As the back-end developer, I learned how important it is to create efficient and reliable systems that support the entire application. This experience also taught me the importance of optimising the database and ensuring the backend is scalable and easy to maintain.
Developer Learnings:
Stephen Asiedu
&
Valence Fredrick
As a back-end developer, I've come to understand the importance of being familiar with various database systems and modules. This knowledge enables me to build diverse applications and maintain versatility in my work. I've also learned that the responsibility for making the right choices rests on my shoulders, guided by my best judgement.
Developer Learnings:
Yves Isite
&
Valence Fredrick
Team collaboration and building user stories using code (user stories implementation).
Developer Learnings:
Maurquise Williams
&
Valence Fredrick
- Process of Creating an MVP: Developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) taught me how to focus on delivering core functionalities balancing between essential features and avoiding scope creep.
- Collaboration in a Real-World Tech Setting: This experience taught me how to collaborate efficiently in a fast-paced tech environment, keeping the team aligned and productive, even while working remotely across time zones.
- Sharpening Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills: This experience honed my ability to think critically and solve problems efficiently. By tackling challenges and finding quick solutions, I sharpened my decision-making and troubleshooting skills in a dynamic, real-world setting.
Developer Learnings:
Jeremiah Williams
&
Valence Fredrick
All in all this experience was very awesome I learned that in coding with others being transparent is key
Developers Learnings:
Justin Farley
&
Valence Fredrick
I learned how important communication is when working with a team. Communication provides understanding, advice, ideas, and much more. While working with the product team, I’ve found that communication keeps everything flowing smoothly. Working with a team also showed me that every member brings something different to the table and we all have to work together in order to align and meet our end goal.