MIT Global Startup Lab

The Challenge

Global Startup Lab was a software incubator program in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia for young entrepreneurs, which was collaboratively among three MIT graduate students. During the 10-week course to create mobile application startups, James led content on problem and customer discovery, customer and market research, interview strategies, survey design, branding identity, and user experience design.

Faced with a difficult language barrier, the approach to teaching and communicating changed each day as the student’s needs shifted. A curriculum that was previously taught predominately through lectures was quickly transformed to interactive games, hands-on design activities, rapid prototyping sessions, and one-on-one conversations in order to guide the students with more engaging forms of interaction.

Design and User Testing

The user-interface design content was structured around a series of user tests to simulate typical customer profiles, and how the design could be both creative and functional.

Creative Innovation

Almost all education content in Mongolia is delivered through lecture format. Instead of a lecture-centric curriculum, we designed the course around creative learning methods, such as brainstorming games, small group workshops, and field research.

Branding Design

In preparation for the final pitch day event, each team prepared a marketing package that focused on communicating company and brand identity.