Role:
UX Reseacher/Designer
Timeline:
November 3 - 7, 2022
Alumni Engagement Improvement Portal
Tackled declining alumni engagement during a 5 day sprint by designing a gamified portal and scalable business model, laying the foundation for improved retention, streamlined communication, and deeper long-term program impact.
Team:
Me, Andre Ford, Brittany Carlson, Gina Yoo, Tara Hickey
Problem Space
The Hidden Genius Project faces challenges with post-graduation engagement, as only about half of each cohort remains actively involved, pointing to a need for enhanced retention strategies. The project's competitive environment, focused on winning prizes, may inadvertently undermine the benefits of peer collaboration and support. Additionally, the onboarding process's strong emphasis on STEM careers overlooks the potential to attract and nurture talents interested in diverse non-STEM fields, limiting the program's overall appeal and inclusivity.
Solution
To address the engagement and diversity challenges faced by The Hidden Genius Project, a supplemental platform was developed to enhance the existing Hidden Genius Alumni Connect Platform. This new platform introduces pre-planned competitive journeys and success metrics, now gamified to heighten the competitive spirit within the organization. This gamification is designed as a motivational tool, encouraging members to continually improve and push themselves, while fostering meaningful cross-cohort connections. The organization can monitor these metrics to measure progress and success, ensuring that the platform effectively supports ongoing engagement and broadens the appeal to a more diverse group of participants.
Organization Overview
The Hidden Genius Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to training and mentoring Black male youth in technology creation, entrepreneurship, and leadership. But at its heart, it's more than just a skills program—it's a movement grounded in brotherhood, empowerment, and shared ambition.
Within the program, a powerful culture of camaraderie and competition thrives. Geniuses push each other to go further—to code sharper, pitch stronger, build smarter. Healthy competition fuels growth, but the deeper bond is brotherhood: a network of young men supporting, challenging, and celebrating one another as they rise together.
Every workshop, project, and pitch competition strengthens not just technical skills, but trust, resilience, and leadership. The Hidden Genius Project creates a space where young Black men aren't just participants—they're leaders, innovators, and role models for one another and their broader communities.
In designing for this community, the goal is to honor that spirit: to create tools and experiences that feel as empowering, challenging, and connected as the brotherhood they already share.
Initial Mind Map
During our design sprint for The Hidden Genius Project, the research process began with an initial review of the organization and its ongoing initiatives. My team and I conducted a brainstorming session to outline our initial perceptions of the primary challenges faced by the organization. This preliminary mind map served as a strategic tool to guide the direction of our inquiry, ensuring that we were well-prepared with focused questions for the subsequent user interviews with organizational staff and current "Geniuses." This approach allowed us to delve deeper into the issues during the interviews, informed by a foundational understanding of potential areas of concern.
User Interviews
"HGP is also a place where you can fallback on, so being able to help out the young learners is opportunity. Ultimately, HGP is also about learning about yourself and becoming the best leader you can be for your community."
"The goal is for alumni to become Youth Educators in order for the program to continue to grow and continue its mission to help other geniuses."
Skills:
User Interviews, Business Strategy, Roadmapping, Design Sprints, Figma, Miro
"Out of the people that join, there are only a handful that stay involved. Many people lose touch. It would be nice if they can realize how many more opportunities come if they stay involved"
Business Plan
Our team identified a critical opportunity: to extend the impact of The Hidden Genius Project beyond its immediate cohorts and into broader community leadership. Across the United States, over 5 million Black male youth represent a powerful but under-supported population with the potential to drive lasting social and economic change.
We proposed a supplemental platform focused on empowering alumni to become active agents of transformation. By giving alumni structured ways to mentor, lead, and reinvest their skills into the next generation, the platform creates a scalable cycle of leadership development, community impact, and organizational growth.
Competitive Analysis
Business Model Canvas
Product Development Roadmap
Proposed Solution
The homepage acts as a personalized dashboard where alumni can track their achievements and monitor their progress through "Journey 1"—a structured milestone system designed to extend growth after graduation. Modeled after the competitive spirit of The Hidden Genius Project, the platform introduces weekly challenges where alumni can earn "Journey Points" for completing leadership, community, and professional development tasks. These challenges are designed to keep momentum high, celebrating progress in a way that feels both personal and aspirational.
Beyond individual tracking, the homepage also offers visibility into the broader alumni community. A live leaderboard allows users to view their peers’ progress, tapping into the program’s healthy culture of friendly competition. By combining personal milestones with community visibility, the homepage turns post-graduation engagement into an active, motivating journey—encouraging alumni to stay connected, push themselves further, and continue building leadership skills long after their cohort ends.
The Journey Map gives alumni a clear, visual overview of the milestones they need to complete in order to advance to the next stage. Each milestone is thoughtfully designed to keep alumni actively engaged with the Hidden Genius Project and strengthen their sense of community over time.
By framing progress like a video game—where users "level up" by completing meaningful tasks—the Journey Map taps into the same competitive spirit that drove excellence during their time in the program. It fosters friendly competition between cohorts, motivating alumni to stay involved, celebrate their achievements, and continue building leadership skills even after graduation.
The messaging platform does more than enable conversation—it creates an ongoing bridge between alumni and the next generation of Geniuses. Through a dedicated mentorship and buddy system, alumni can guide current students, share real-world insights, and actively shape the future of the Hidden Genius community.
This system transforms casual connection into purposeful leadership. It strengthens bonds across cohorts, keeps alumni meaningfully engaged, and ensures that the spirit of mentorship—core to the Hidden Genius mission—continues to grow, evolve, and multiply with every graduating class.
Empowering young Black men to lead and create impact is central to The Hidden Genius Project’s mission. To extend that mission beyond the classroom, our team proposed a dedicated job portal—designed to connect current Geniuses with real-world career opportunities and networks that align with their values.
Through the platform, students can explore roles at companies committed to innovation and social impact, while also building direct connections with alumni already working in these spaces. The job board serves not just as a career tool, but as a bridge to leadership, visibility, and lasting influence in industries where representation matters.
In response to the isolation caused by the pandemic, our team saw an opportunity to reintroduce real-time, face-to-face interaction through the alumni platform. Support groups allow alumni and current Geniuses to meet virtually, build relationships, and maintain the strong sense of brotherhood that defines The Hidden Genius Project.
To keep the experience aligned with HGP’s competitive spirit, we incorporated cohort journey tracking—displayed at the bottom of the page—so cohorts can not only connect, but also monitor each other's progress and milestones. This strengthens both personal bonds and the healthy competition that fuels continued growth across generations.
Pain Points
1. Alumni engagement declines significantly after graduation
While the program fosters strong bonds during the training phase, there is a noticeable drop-off in participation once Geniuses complete their initial cohort. Only about 50% continue their involvement by becoming Youth Educators.
This decline suggests that while the program is transformational during active participation, it lacks a structured pathway to maintain long-term connection. Without intentional alumni engagement strategies—such as leadership development programs, professional mentorship, or alumni-driven initiatives—graduates may feel disconnected from the ecosystem they helped build. Strengthening the post-graduation experience is essential to sustain momentum, deepen the network’s influence, and create generational leadership within the Hidden Genius community.
2. Competitive incentives drive excellence but risk diminishing collaboration
Competitions for prizes, recognition, and awards are effective at pushing Geniuses toward high achievement. However, an unintended side effect is that the spirit of collaboration—the very brotherhood that defines the Hidden Genius Project—can sometimes be overshadowed by individualism.
While competition fuels growth, it must be balanced carefully to ensure that students remain invested not just in personal success, but in collective uplift. Reinforcing teamwork challenges, group problem-solving exercises, and co-ownership of success could help maintain the core culture of mutual support, even within competitive frameworks.
3. Career pathways beyond STEM are underemphasized during onboarding
The current onboarding process places a strong emphasis on careers in STEM fields like coding, engineering, and tech entrepreneurship. While this aligns with industry needs, it may unintentionally limit the project’s appeal to young men whose talents and ambitions extend into adjacent or alternative fields—such as digital design, creative storytelling, business leadership, or social innovation.
By broadening the career vision presented early on, the Hidden Genius Project could position itself not only as a launchpad for tech innovators but also as a catalyst for a wider spectrum of leadership, creativity, and entrepreneurship. This expansion could invite even greater diversity of thought, talent, and aspiration into the Genius network.