John Hong
Stanford, CA
I am a product designer who operates at the junction of software and hardware. From machine interfaces to mobile/web platforms, I design experiences through a lens that places people at the heart of innovation.
With a MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, specializing in physical product design and manufacturing, and a BS in Product Design from Stanford, I blend technical expertise with a deep foundation in human-centered design to create meaningful, impactful solutions.
Projects
Sparkademy
Product Designer
June 2020 — July 2021
Remote (Zurich, Switzerland)
Sparkademy is an ed-tech startup (~25 employees) based in Zurich, Switzerland. Sparkademy brings personalized and scalable learning to the corporate world, helping employees develop innovation & leadership skills and achieve their full professional potential, thus future-proofing their businesses from within. Some client companies include Cargill, Siemens, and Phillip Morris International.
As the sole designer of the company, I was responsible for establishing design principles and a design system, leading a UI/UX overhaul of Sparkademy’s products, and leading the design process of many exciting projects.
All projects showcased below are fully shipped and currently have active users. Some screenshots and vidoes show Figma mocks because I no longer have access to the actual platform.
Design System
Establishing a single source of truth
When I joined Sparkademy, the company was less than 6 months old, and there wasn’t a unified user experience. The learning platform was an MVP designed by two software engineers, users had to use several 3rd party platforms to learn, and Sparkademy had been receiving countless user complaints and clarification request emails on a daily basis.
From the company’s internal design process to the consumer-facing platform and experience, I was responsible for helping Sparkademy become more user-centric and improving the overall user experience of Sparkademy’s products.
The first step I took was assessing all the UX issues present in the overall user experience. I then established design principles and a design system, a single source of truth, to lay the foundations to a consistent and user-centric design/development environment.
Primary End-User Experience
Creating the design system had allowed me to address the issue of inconsistency with the visual design, but the issue of incoherency with the overall platform and user flow still had to be addressed. To do so, I analyzed the existing flow of the platform and created a new flow that is much more efficient. While the previous platform requires the user to go through 5 steps to begin/resume the course upon logging in, my design provides a single-step pathway to their course and a complete overview of their learning journey on a single page.
My Role
Building upon the design principles and design system I created (work above), I took lead of the whole redesigning process of the Sparkademy platform.
- UI/UX and heuristic evaluations of existing platform
- Wireframing and low to high fidelity prototyping
- Entire UI/UX design and facilitating designer-engineer handoff
- Setting up user engagement tracking with Heap Analytics and Intercom
Impact
- Average NPS Score increase from −4 (before I joined) to 20 (since my work started being implemented)
- Amount of clarification requests/emails per week dropped by an estimated 85%
Landing Page & Method Kit
Assignment & GradingAfter conducting extensive user research, I’ve identified the biggest pain point in the user experience to as the dissatisfaction with the Practical Assignment—a series of course-related exercises that users are required to complete in order to pass the respective module. Users were experiencing difficulties with the overall work & submission process, and they were unhappy with the lack of actionable feedback.
In response, I’ve led the process of creating a Practical Assignment that is fully integrated into the Sparkademy platform. The integration of the Practical Assignment meant the grading system had to adapt accordingly, so I also designed a grading tool for the Sparkademy team in parallel.
My Role
I took lead of the entire design process of both the Practical Assignment and Grading Tool
- Organizing/conducting user interviews
- Analyzing insights
- Prototyping & testing
- Design & handoff of the final product
- Creating a video product tutorial
Impact
- 72% of users are satisfied + highly-satisfied with the new platform (22% neutral)
- Grading time of single assignment decrease by 50% (from 30+ minutes to under 15 minutes)
- 97% would be disappointed if they could no longer receive feedback
- Practical Assignment (user-facing) and Grading (internal) process now 100% done on a single platform.
Practical Assignment
Tutorial Video
Grading Platform (Internal)
Measured Impact
A New Learning Experience
My Role
This project is a joint effort by the research intern, product manager, and myself (UX designer). I was responsible for:
- Conducting literature research on the topics of motivation and autonomy to lay the foundations.
- Organizing & analyzing user feedback relevant to this project
- Creating relevant personas and user journeys of the current and ideal learning experience
- Ideating & redesigning the fundamental structure of Sparkademy’s courses/lessons
- Designing the entire UI/UX of the new learning platform
- Planning the usability testing of the MVP
Note
This project is the final project I worked on at Sparkademy. Measurable impacts are not noted, as this was implemented after my departure.