3 of 27

Team Pitbull

Dave Vo

Iisha Kshatriya

Samantha Sayson

Mark Morera

Nicole Gong

International Students

🇨🇳

🇻🇳🇺🇲

🇮🇳

🇸🇬

🇵🇭🇺🇲

4 of 27

Motivation

858,356

international students in the US as of 2023 [2]

$33.8 billion

contributed to the U.S. economy [1]

335,423

jobs supported by international students [1]

“There are so many things to take care of outside of documentation without a U.S. family, without a phone number...a permanent home address, ordering, adapting has been hard.” - Interviewee A

“The [UCSD] office would send us away for resources on their website. They weren’t really helpful or didn’t care to understand how confused international students are.” - Interviewee B

5 of 27

We aim to ease the burden international students face with transitioning into the country they are pursuing their studies, which entail cultural barriers, finding suitable housing, understanding local norms, and legal requirements.

Our mission

7 of 27

Final Competitive Analysis

Building off of our updated metrics of credibility, accessibility, and cultural exchange, we found that:

Resources that are highly credible tend to have more robust user safety measures

Resources that facilitate more wide-reaching cultural exchange might be less credible

Resources that are highly accessible might provide more personalized cultural exchange

Matrix Overview

8 of 27

Final Competitive Analysis

Global pen-pal platform sparks friendships across borders, emphasizes thoughtful conversation with anonymity + delaying messages by time zone. However, no means of evolving relationship or inspiring minimally engaged penpals.

Slowly

Social platform for international students and expats, multiple sub-communities by country and event tabs for IRL socializing. However, many users were commonly irked by scammers and poor customer support.

Internations

Host family platform with extensive matching, consultation, and cultural adjustment programs for students and families. Legal frameworks provide security, but is costly given that tuition is expensive for international students.

Ojisu

9 of 27

Final B udget

With the first 2 quarters of i-Hub launch, we predicted the user base size and retention rates using our web probe.

10 of 27

Web Probe Analysis

As of May 27, our A/B landing page testing shows that V1 has a high conversion rate, high number of unique visits, and subscriptions. These results validate user interest and high demand for our product, and our end users prefer resources that are more specific and targeted to international students. Link to web probe

11 of 27

Concierge MVP Analysis

End users indicated a strong willingness to pay for our premium features:

“The job situation is especially difficult for international students and any advice could be really helpful. So I would most definitely pay for such a service.”
“5-15 dollars/month for the matching feature subscription”, “will be willing to pay 5-10 dollars for access to the families”

End users expressed relatability to scenarios presented and high interest in services

“Breaks are always lonely because it’s so expensive to go back home. All my friends are usually back home, so this is perfect for me as I will be able to find a new family to spend my break with and get to know the culture and traditions!”
“Wish it would be better and more accessible than ispo…”

12 of 27

Final Prototype

13 of 27

Crowdfunding Campaign

14 of 27

Before: Value Flow Diagram

15 of 27

After: Value Flow Diagram

16 of 27

Final Poster

17 of 27

Current Brand Guidelines

"Believe me, been there, done that."

Color Palette

Logo

Fonts

18 of 27

Breaking down i-Hub

Free features

i-Hub

Paid features

Mentor matcher

Host family finder

Chat Forums

19 of 27

That’s it! See you next time. Dalé!

20 of 27

Appendix

Figma:

https://www.figma.com/design/Q1qXV8pHty2NX7KBD7xT6U/Style-Guide?node-id=365-24&t=EGEAHKKbH2L1uLLv-1

Concierge MVP Plan: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IlV8r0BPJqFyKk6FzTQcryLSmlRVzMkC7Kjf_hr4tmI/edit?usp=sharing

22 of 27

Typographic + Logo Exploration

23 of 27

Appendix - A/B Landing Pages + Ads

We created concept-centered probes comparing 2 different landing pages that had their own ads. We made the pages using MailChimp.

Version A of landing page + ad - more specific to and targeted only international students. (https://mailchi.mp/a46e56af80a8/ihub1 )
Version B of landing page + ad - more general, targeted international students and local students. (https://mailchi.mp/c4a5760da6a9/gurl )

Why two versions of concept-centered probes?

We wanted to see how we can appeal to our main audience of international students, but also see if local students would be interested in also joining this app and how we could potentially recruit them to join our app as ambassadors (mentors for the international students).

24 of 27

Top Performing Keywords:

"study international" remains the best performer

with a CTR of 15.03%

"international university" attracts the most clicks (553)

Web keywords & Demographic

Target Demographics:

Primarily international students aged 18-34 who are either planning to study abroad or currently studying overseas.

25 of 27

Web probe analysis

Ad Analysis (May 16 - May 23):

Clicks: Grew to 1.29K, continuing the upward trend.

Impressions: Increased to 14.6K, maintaining growth in visibility.

26 of 27

MVP Analysis Participant 1

Scenario 1: Events page was removed from final prototype and idea: Professor Dow suggested we simplify our idea and our idea is just a recreation of event websites e.g. EventBrite.

27 of 27

MVP Analysis Participant 2