Do you have a passion for design and using your skills for social good? Do you want to improve your skills through mentorship and weekly design critique? Or perhaps you like seeing your designs come to life and be used by real people? Hack4Impact designers work closely with software developers and the product manager to create an impactful, user-centered product. You will go from researching and defining the problem, to ideation for solutions, to iterating upon your designs, and finally to handing off your designs to developers for implementation.

Why · What you will be doing · What you should have · How to apply

Why

1. Utilize your skills for good. We are all privileged to have a premier education at U of I, and it is our obligation to use these learned skills to give back to our communities.
2. Not just a group project. We've all worked on a group project where 1 or 2 of your teammates didn't do anything at all. It sucks. At Hack4Impact, you have the chance to work with fully dedicated teammates who are passionate about the work we do. The non-profit organizations trust us, and we take this responsibility very seriously. We strive to deliver the best user-centric product.
3. Join a tight-knit community. We are a small group of students with high aspirations and a passion for making a positive impact in the world. Our internal community has been referred to by members as a family where people are free to discuss everything from their academics to their personal life.
4. Design impactful products. The products we build are for real people. We provide customized solutions that are targeted to the clients we work with. User experience and usability of our products are of highest paramount.

👀 Our Mission

Unite students to build well-engineered, user-centric, and impactful products for social change.

Hack4Impact believes in using tech for good. We believe in technology’s huge potential to empower activists and humanitarians to create lasting and impactful social change. We connect student software developers with nonprofits and other socially responsible businesses to develop powerful new tools for social change, enabling them to further their mission and better engage their clients. We work to foster a tight-knit community of dedicated students collaborating together to build a better society and to make technology more accessible and inclusive to underserved communities.

🎨 What you will be doing

Designers collaborate in cross-functional teams to design the product from ideation to creating wireframes, mock-ups, and user interface designs with a core emphasis on user experience for the final product. They are responsible for the holistic design of the product down to the granular details of the UI.

• Work with the Product Manager to define the product and which user needs it satisfies.
• Perform and utilize user research (gather, synthesize, and present findings to the team) to inform design decisions.
• Iterate on designs based on user testing, feedback from other project members, org-wide design critiques, and calls with the nonprofit client.
• Hand off designs to developers for implementation while considering development and time constraints, different states and edge cases, etc.

🎉 Opportunities

Collaboration

See your designs come to life through close product & engineering collaboration. Work with devs to tackle edge cases and technical considerations.

Design Critique

Get feedback from designers and PMs across the org through weekly critique! Learn and grow with other students.

Industry Designers

Learn from designers who have been working in industry to improve your critical thinking, interaction, and visual design skills.

🛠 What you should have

• Student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign