Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Catherine Francis

TLDR; After completing the UX Immersion course in General Assembly, students attend a Meet & Greet session where we network with potential employers and partners. I experimented with a way to connect with people without using business cards.

The Goal: Connect with as many people as I could on the Meet & Greet

The Idea: Enable a way for me to connect with people without having to physically be there.

I placed posters to entice people to take part in an experiment. When introducing myself to visitors, I’d interest them in taking part in the experiment. It was a great ice breaker and the experience allowed for the user to choose to proceed or exit the experiment. If they proceeded, they’d receive my resume, portfolio and linkedin links. This was how the experience worked:

CTA on the poster leads to a website which then leads to a html code that draws up an email

The results

A quick survey amongst my classmates (sample size: 11) showed that an average of 10 name cards exchanged during the meet & greet. I garnered 17 contacts.

But it remains to be seen if these were quality contacts and had a high level of interest in working with me.

That said, it was a fun experiment and it gave me a great ice breaker at the Meet & Greet. There were a couple of downsides though.

I connected with personal emails instead of business emails.
The MAILTO: code calls up a default email app on mobile phones so unless the phone used was a work phone, i received emails that were from personal addresses by default.
I couldn’t observe everyone who tried the experiment
As you could already tell, only half completed the entire experiement. I wasn’t able to pinpoint what made the other half drop off.

Verdict

The Meet & Greet felt like a safe space to try and fail. Business cards do have their use but I wanted to make an impression when I met someone for the first time. I did get some positive reactions and emails from this experiment so I’d try it out again at networking events and observe the outcome of these contacts.

How I networked without business cards was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How I networked without business cards

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