🧠 Experimental Project（Personal Exploration）

Real process. Reusable thinking.

This is a self-initiated UX case study, based on a fictional concept designed to explore better async knowledge sharing in distributed teams.

Tipshelf is a lightweight internal tool that helps async teams capture and reuse process-level knowledge across roles, timezones, and projects.

<aside> ✏️

This project is a UX case study derived from the ideas and insights explored in my earlier reflection, “Cultivating a Knowledge Sharing Habit in Global Teams.” While that piece focused on identifying challenges in distributed knowledge exchange, this case study translates those insights into a practical product concept.

</aside>

🔸 1. User Personas

👤 Lisa – Junior UX Designer / Knowledge Seeker

• Role: Junior UX Designer (1st year)
• Context: Remote team, recently joined a cross-functional product squad
• Pain Points:
  • Often unsure how to solve unfamiliar problems
  • Finds it hard to locate useful insights beyond project-specific docs
• Goals:
  • Learn from others’ experiences, not just decisions
  • Gain confidence through understanding past processes and problem-solving steps
• Usage Scenarios:
  • Lisa struggles with designing a user flow with branching logic. Searching through Slack gives her decisions, but not the reasoning.
  • Using Tipshelf, she finds a post by a peer sharing how they explored multiple options and used team feedback to narrow down the flow.
  • Because the post is tagged with Figma, Flow Design, and Prototype, Lisa finds it easily and is able to explore related tips as well.

👤 Anna – Mid-level Engineer / Knowledge Contributor

• Role: Mid-level Engineer (3rd year)
• Context: Contributing to shared practices and mentoring new members
• Pain Points:
  • Initially found knowledge sharing vague and effortful
  • Unsure if her shared tips were useful or acknowledged
• Goals:
  • Help others avoid similar struggles by sharing real process insights
  • Feel that her contribution has a visible impact
  • Align with company culture where sharing is valued and rewarded
• Usage Scenario:
  • At first, Anna found Tipshelf confusing and time-consuming — especially when posting was mandatory during her onboarding.
  • But over time, she received feedback like “👍 Helpful!” and comments like “Thanks, this saved us hours!”
  • This made sharing enjoyable. Knowing that tips are recognized in performance reviews also gave it more meaning.