Turning connections into lasting opportunities.

Three smartphone screens showing a networking app. The middle screen displays a pink background with the text 'Hello. Ready to grow your network connections?' and a 'Sign up' button. The left screen shows a lock icon and notification on a purple and pink background. The right screen has a pink gradient background with a chat bubble containing the text 'Hey FollowUp!'

HeyFollowUp UX Case Study

Overview

HeyFollowUp is a mobile-first networking tool that helps professionals turn fleeting connections into meaningful relationships. I led the end-to-end UX process, from research synthesis to high-fidelity prototypes, collaborating with the team to ensure the design addressed real user needs. The goal was to create a fast, human-centered experience that makes capturing contacts and following up effortless.

Role
UX Designer-Bootcamp Project

Duration
9 Weeks

Team
Collaborated with a team on research, led design, synthesis, and prototyping

Tools
Figma, Miro, Google Docs

Faces behind the Connections.

  • A young Black man with glasses and a short Afro hairstyle, smiling and wearing a yellow button-up shirt against a plain background.

    Inexperienced connector seeking simple capture and organization to grow confidence and maintain relationships.

    Milton The Novice Networker

  • A woman with curly brown hair smiling and wearing a green blazer and top against a white background.

    Values high-quality leads but feels existing tools are clunky, overwhelming, and ultimately too time-consuming to rely on.

    Hannah The Strategic Networker

  • A woman with long dark hair making a grimace or pained expression, wearing a beige shirt and vest against a plain white background.

    Prioritizes authenticity, balancing efficiency with personal touch to sustain consistent, meaningful engagement.

    Mindy The Seasoned Networker

Problem and Opportunity

Networking events are awkward, and most connections fade quickly. People forget names, lose context, or struggle with follow-ups. Existing tools focus on exchanging contact details but don’t support authentic relationship building. Users want to connect genuinely but need simple, actionable tools to manage contacts and follow up with ease.

This created an opportunity for a mobile-first solution that organizes contacts, provides smart reminders, and guides outreach. By reducing friction, professionals can stay confident, maintain relationships, and unlock more value from networking.

A digital profile of a person named Milton, including their picture, brief biography, struggles, and importance of their work in networking. The profile highlights Milton's early career, struggles with follow-ups, networking structure, and feelings of nervousness, emphasizing their goal to make networking easier and more accessible.
Milton's journey map for attending a post-work networking mixer, showing actions, touch points, thoughts, feelings, and opportunities before, during, immediately after, and a few days after the event.
A presentation slide titled 'Business Opportunities' listing three strategic priorities: Seamless Capture for adoption, Smart Organization for retention, and Authentic AI Follow-up for monetization, with descriptive text for each.

Research and Competitive Analysis

I conducted a competitive analysis and user interviews to uncover gaps in existing networking tools. Most competitors focus on contact exchange without meaningful follow-up support or are overly complex. For example, Clay offers robust data tracking but is difficult for non-technical users. Tools like Blinq, Popyl, and Covve lack human-centered automation, making follow-ups feel mechanical or easily forgotten.

HeyFollowUp differentiates itself through fast contact capture, optional selfies for memory, pre- and post-event follow-ups, and AI-powered learning that generates personalized templates, manages notes, and organizes tags based on user behavior. These insights shaped the design strategy and feature set, ensuring the tool solved real user needs while remaining simple and approachable.

How to Solve It

HeyFollowUp makes networking easier with three simple things: effortless capture so you never lose a contact, smart organization with reminders and tags, and authentic follow-up powered by AI.

Together, these features turn quick introductions into lasting relationships.

Design Process and Solution

The core challenge was to make follow-ups fast, simple, and human-centered. I explored solutions, sketched flows, and iterated on interactions before building low- to high-fidelity prototypes in Figma. Throughout, I collaborated closely with the team while taking ownership of design decisions, flows, and visual execution.

HeyFollowUp acts as a networking buddy, helping users capture contacts quickly and act on connections effortlessly. Users can take quick notes, add tags and optionally snap a selfie to create a visual memory. AI-powered learning personalizes follow-up templates based on these notes, tags, and past interactions, ensuring outreach feels authentic and context-aware. Smart reminders guide users without overwhelming them, keeping relationships alive even when networking gets busy.

The mobile-first design emphasizes speed, simplicity, and human-centered interactions, enabling users to stay organized and confident.

A series of four mobile app screens showing a contact management interface with options to search, add contacts and notes, view contact profiles, schedule follow-ups, and manage contact details.
Sequence of four smartphone screens displaying a networking app in different modes, including onboarding and various user interface features related to connection management and event planning.
Four smartphone screens showing a contact capture app process: 1) Capture contact, 2) Scan business card, 3) Take picture, 4) Fill contact information form.

Strategic Priorities for Business Success

Seamless Capture for Adoption

We make contact capture effortless and reliable.

This drives event adoption because users know our app won’t let them down in the middle of a conversation. One smooth capture experience builds trust for the next event.

Smart Organization for Retention

We keep users coming back with context, prioritization, and intelligent reminders.

When they can’t remember how they met someone or when to follow up, they open our app. That regular usage creates habit and reduces churn.

Authentic AI Follow-up for Monetization

We enable efficient yet personal outreach that professionals will pay for.

AI-powered personalization that still feels authentic is our key differentiator, premium value worth paying for.

Deliver quick, personalized onboarding to demonstrate value immediately and boost retention.

Deliver quick, personalized onboarding to demonstrate value immediately and boost retention.

Your hub for keeping connections alive with handy tips to help when just starting out.

Your hub for keeping connections alive with handy tips to help when just starting out.

Send follow-ups that feel personal, not like a generic reminder.

Send follow-ups that feel personal, not like a generic reminder.

Auto-filled follow-ups that feel thoughtful, not templated.

Auto-filled follow-ups that feel thoughtful, not templated.

Capture info in seconds, connect now to follow up later.

Capture info in seconds, connect now to follow up later.

Quickly grab contact info so you can connect and go.

Quickly grab contact info so you can connect and go.

Easily sort and find your contacts so nothing slips through the cracks.

Easily sort and find your contacts so nothing slips through the cracks.

User Validation and Reflection

I conducted prototype testing with 7 users to evaluate key flows, focusing on templated follow-ups rather than fully free-flow interactions. Feedback was positive: participants liked the AI-powered follow-up templates and appreciated that the tool could seamlessly work with tools they already use daily, like email and calendars, reducing friction and making it easier to maintain connections.

These insights reinforced the design direction and validated the value of features such as reminders, notes, tags, and AI-generated outreach. Leading the end-to-end UX process while collaborating with the team demonstrated both strategic thinking and execution. HeyFollowUp illustrates how thoughtful, human-centered design paired with intelligent automation can turn fleeting networking connections into lasting relationships, highlighting empathy, usability, and purposeful UX.

Screenshots of a mobile app interface showing networking goals, user profile, and weekly goals pages with pink, gray, and white color scheme.
Screenshots of a social networking app on a smartphone displaying three screens: a profile page, a goals page, and a contacts page, with various user information and interface options.
Comparison of two smartphone screens displaying messaging app interfaces with different message compositions.