Alianza
Thesis Project
My Role
UX and Product Designer
My Team
Kanksha Dixit and Shivani Bhosle
Mentors and Advisors
Advisor: Prof. James Gardner
Mentors: Matt Cyr, Krista Siniscarco, Brodie Rich
Timeline
September 2024 - December 2024
Tool Utilized
Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Qualtrics, Miro, Canva, Zoom
My Contributions
Conceptualization, Market Research, Problem validation, Product Strategy and Scope, Competitive analysis, Wireframing and Prototyping
While exploring startup incubators and entrepreneurship spaces during grad school, I kept noticing a pattern: early-stage founders, especially first-timers, had great ideas but lacked the right collaborators, structure, or guidance to move forward. I saw them bounce between Slack, Trello, Notion, Calendly, and still struggle to bring their vision to life.
As someone deeply interested in digital product design and entrepreneurship, I asked myself:
What if we could design a space where people don’t just “talk about building”—they actually start building, faster and smarter?
To validate how scattered tools affected the startups
We launched surveys on Qualtrics and in-person user interviews across innovation labs at Harvard, MIT, and Northeastern University, recent graduates, and early entrepreneurs. Also, our mentors suggested focusing on the core problem rather than solving multiple things.
The common themes were loud and clear:
I can't find the right, like-minded people. It is too overwhelming.
Finding people to invest in the startup is a challenge.
I had so many ideas but didn't know what to do, and it took me days to find programs to find guidance.
AI interactions feel too general and monotonous, and not sure how to trust AI for Business.
We mapped these insights using affinity mapping, which revealed three major pain points :
- Find the right collaborators efficiently
- Structure and manage their projects effectively
- Access expert guidance when making critical decisions
We defined two core users:
Emily (Founder): Has an idea, no cofounder, feels overwhelmed with where to start
John (Collaborator): Recent grad seeking real-world experience, doesn’t know how to find meaningful projects
These personas shaped every part of our design thinking process.
We envisioned Alianza as an AI-augmented platform where early founders could:
Ideate with structure (AI prompts, templates, frameworks)
Find right-fit collaborators (profile-matching, skill tagging, project roles)
Manage workflows (kanban boards, dashboards, AI task suggestions)
Grow with mentorship (future feature: workshops, expert Q&A)
“Imagine Notion, Figma, and a startup mentor rolled into one focused experience for early founders.”
Identifying Market Gaps
Through Feature Analysis, We compared our product with some of the existing leading tools. While the tools are great, "Alianza" stood out to be a unified feature platform.
Ideation
We began strategizing userflows for each screen and sketching small elements of the platform and what the initial flow would look like.
The idea was to match with the help of AI onboarding and a profile card that highlights skills, which would act as an SEO to match it for the right people.
We wanted the user to have a dashboard experience for a holistic view of the unified platform
The goal was to build a role-based platform where AI adapts to each user through conversation. We focused on four core areas: Onboarding, Dashboard, Community, and Project Management. Our mentor suggested taking a more conversational approach towards AI, and so did the users mention "humanizing the AI interaction". We refined the wireframes to better align with user needs.
We tested low-fidelity prototypes with 4–5 users across both personas. Conducting five informal walkthroughs with the user helped us uncover blind spots in my onboarding flow, especially around how users interpreted the AI prompts.
Check the flows we tested
User Responses
The onboarding feels rushed. It's hard to understand what choices need to be made and how to answer the questions.
Felt very anxious while choosing and making big decisions without guidance.
There’s no way to organize teams or files, which gets messy when managing multiple things.
The AI task suggestions are helpful, but I wish they were more tailored to my progress or past inputs.
I can’t upload physical research or paper-based ideas into the AI chat, which is frustrating.
"The dashboard and task progress are confusing. I don’t know what to do next or how to hit milestones. It needs clearer steps and visual cues."
We addressed user insights with final improvements such as :
Simplified onboarding broken into steps
Clear role explanations
Personalized dashboards for each user type
Smart AI nudges based on task progress and uploaded materials
Features
Why it matters
Helps founders break ideas into actionable steps
Role-Based Dashboards
Tailored views for founders vs collaborators
AI Task Suggestions
Guides next steps, based on progress
Smart Matching
Suggests collaborators based on skills and goals
Kanban Boards
Clear, trackable task organization
Check the flows we tested
AI onboarding to build the right team faster.
Connects founders with the people who can bring them to life.
Recommends projects tailored to the collaborator’s skills.
Personalized dashboards to create a unified tailored experience.
Guided project flow for founders to manage and grow their projects
Growth-focused profiles for collaborators to enhance visibility and connect with the right opportunities
AI-driven community experience where individuals can connect
- AI helps each profile to spotlight relevant skills and interests, making it easier to discover the right people and opportunities
Seamlessly organize, track, and prioritize your project tasks.
- With AI-recommended templates and task suggestions, planning becomes easy.
- Kanban-style boards support intuitive, accessible task management, helping ideas move efficiently from concept to execution.
Scalability
We see opportunities to support more users by enabling multi-project management and adding mentoring workshops to connect them with industry experts.
In future versions, we also imagined building pathways to mentors and funders, helping promising projects gain traction and funding opportunities.
Business
We envisioned Alianza as a free platform to start with, as the goal is to build a strong, engaged community of early-stage founders and creators without any upfront barriers.
Once we had a solid user base, the idea was to introduce premium features focused on project management like structured task flows, team roles, and progress tracking, as part of a paid plan.
This approach lets us prioritize user growth early on, while still planning for long-term sustainability.
