Locomoco Space: Designing a Purpose-Driven Dashboard for Early-Career Creatives
Web App
UX Research
Component Design
Why isn’t there a platform that bridges learning with practical experience for aspiring early-career creatives?
In an era where society is drawn to flashy end results and superficial achievements, I started Locomoco with a vision to create a safe space where designers and developers can explore ideas, grow their skills, and build meaningful connections.
How might we design a simple starting point to help users move beyond mindless scrolling and easily discover content through shared values and common goals?
HOW DID I GET HERE?
The space is the heart of the Locomoco. It moves away from traditional portfolio-driven browsing metrics and introduces a simplified discovery experience with an organized Bento layout. It curates content based on users' real interests, ensuring they see exactly what aligns with their needs and preferences.
Users enter the platform with specific goals. To design an effective landing page, it’s essential to understand the key actions that drive users to the platform. Through research, I identified three most common daily activities:
Intuitive Way to Explore Relevant Projects and Seek Partners
Users need an easy and efficient way to find and connect with projects and individuals that align with their interests.
Users simply describe what they are looking for, and our Moco AI Engine will provide personalized project and profile recommendations.
Smooth Navigation Between Spaces
Users need to access resources efficiently without disrupting their original flow within the platform.
The tab-based navigation system allows users to switch seamlessly between pages without losing context or progress, ensuring they can access resources whenever needed.
How to design a dashboard that decentralizes the focus on visual aesthetics and polished experiences?
SKIP TO DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS
Existing platforms often promote content aligned with users’ past interests or popular trends, limiting discovery paths and reinforcing biases. This creates a narrow experience where only visually striking work gains visibility, excluding innovative ideas and early-stage projects.
The dashboard aims to overcome these biases by allowing users to explore projects and collaborators through shared ideas, values, and creative processes more directly.
To address these challenges, I conducted three levels of research with distinct objectives:
Secondary Research
To Understand culture and industry trends.
User
Research
To Identify user needs, motivations, and personas.
Design
Research
To Test usability and validate feasibility.
To Understand
Culture and Trends
Secondary Research
To deepen my understanding of the industry and validate these challenges, I conducted a secondary analysis of the tools currently available in the market.
I found that existing platforms set an unreasonably high bar for emerging designers and developers, limiting their ability to experiment, learn, and grow through mistakes. Some common problems are:
Networking is driven by followers and likes. Algorithms favor trending works. Limited discovery paths reinforce familiar content, reducing exploration.
To Identify user needs
and motivations
User Research
24
User
Surveys
6
SME Interviews
To guide the initial design direction of the platform, I conducted 24 surveys and 6 key SME interviews targeting:
Emerging designers, Early career developers, Senior creative professionals.
While the dashboard is just one of the features within the broader system for the platform, it draws upon these key findings from the research to address user needs effectively and streamline the collaborative experience. And here is what we found.
INSIGHT 01
Users are driven by hands-on projects that help them develop new skills. However, many struggle to find projects that can match their learning goals and personal interests.
INSIGHT 02
Many users feel overwhelmed by the inefficiency of existing platforms like Behance, Dribbble, or LinkedIn for their social media-like experiences.
These platforms often lead users down a distracting path when browsing endlessly. Users are looking for practical tools for project discovery.
“You cannot mandate productivity; you must provide the tools to let people become their best.”
INSIGHT 03
Users expressed a strong need for collaborative projects. Additionally, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) emphasized that more collaboration opportunities would significantly enhance their professional growth in the early years.
However, both groups currently lack the necessary connections to collaborate effectively.
"Finding the right resources to start a project is challenging if you don't have much experience. Passion projects are hard to manage because there is no one to keep you accountable if you're working on your own."
Guan.A - Early Career Developer
To Understand
Users
User Research
Through a combination of survey data, secondary research, and exploratory interviews with 8 participants — designers and developers across various roles and career stages — it became clear that users share common motivations and needs. Despite their diverse backgrounds, their feedback highlighted overlapping ways they would engage with the platform.
Content Blocks
Easy to engage,
Hard to miss out
Side Navigation
Navigate between spaces without friction
Content Search
Quickly filter and sort for curated content
Become A Owner
Publish your own projects
DESIGN PROCESS
