Network Notes - LinkedIn Assistant Tool

Framing the Problem

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who does it affect?

Networking events are great places to meet new people, offering access to industry insights and opportunities, and fostering personal and professional development.

The problem is that you can quickly forget who you talked to, what they said, and what to follow up on. Not because you’re disinterested, but because our brains aren’t designed for it.

At these events, you're juggling:

• Names

• Faces

• Companies

• Job roles

• Specific topics ("talked about referral to Spotify")

• Follow-up actions

That’s well beyond what our brain can handle, especially under social pressure.

Even when you recognize someone later (face, LinkedIn), you often can't recall what was said or promised.

That leads to:

• Missed follow-ups

• Lost opportunities

• Shallow LinkedIn connections with no context

Why we forget conversations -

Limited Short-Term Memory

People forget 50% of new information within an hour and up to 90% within a week -(Ebbinghause Forgetting Curve)

Name-Face-Topic Disconnection

You might remember:

• A name or a face

• A topic or a company

But putting them together later? That’s hard.

Similarity & Repetition

At events, you meet multiple:

• Designers

• Engineers

• Startup founders ...and they all start to blur.

Idea Explanation

What is your idea? How does it fix the problem?

We’re not trying to remember everything.

We’re building a tool that:

• Captures context (who, what, follow-up)

• Automates what the brain is bad at (recall under load)

Frees up space for what matters (connecting, being present)

After meeting someone (e.g. scanning their QR code), it prompts you to quickly add notes — via text or voice — about the person, the conversation, and any follow-ups. Later, these notes appear on their LinkedIn profile and in a dedicated dashboard, where AI can suggest thoughtful follow-up messages. It helps prioritise connections based on your career goals and makes networking intentional, not forgettable.

Implementation

How do all the pieces fit together? Does your frontend make requests to your backend? Where does your database fit in?

All the pieces of the extension work together entirely within the browser. The frontend, which is the sticky note panel that appears on LinkedIn profiles, does not make any requests to a backend. Instead, it saves and retrieves notes using Chrome’s built-in storage, linked to the specific profile URL. A separate dashboard view lets users browse and manage all their saved notes in one place.

At the moment, there is no backend or external database involved. However, the extension is designed in a way that would allow easy integration of a backend like Firebase in the future. This would support features such as cloud syncing and voice-to-text.
Challenges

What did you struggle with? How did you overcome it?

One of our biggest challenges was aligning on the exact scope and details of the product. We had lots of ideas and directions, which made it difficult to lock in a clear plan early on. As a result, we lost some time for implementation. However, once we aligned, the team moved quickly and collaboratively. Huda and Bianca worked swiftly and smoothly on the design, while Crystal and Elena worked well as a team coding the product. Priya then pulled everything together with presentation prep and research, helping us clearly articulate the problem and why our solution matters. Despite the rocky start, we found our flow and delivered something we’re proud of.

Accomplishments

What did you learn? What did you accomplish?

Huda: You can easily come up with a few solid ideas and feel good about them, but the commitment to stick and try to make one work is the hardest part of the process. Having patience and continously checking in with your teammates is crucial and is what I believe worked for us as a team. We accomplished alot despite us taking a little longer on ideation.

Elena: I've learned how to make Google Chrome extensions. I've learned how to refine ideas and utilise The Pareto Principle.

Bianca: I've learned how to prioritise new ideas when you have a strict amount of time.

Priya: I have learnt how powerful collaboration can be when everyone works to their strengths, design, code, research, and presentation. All working in sync toward one goal. When this aligns it makes everything work much faster and smoother

Crystal: I have a better understanding of how important it is to see a project through to completion. Making consistent progress and regularly checking in makes sure that goals stay on track and any issues are addressed early.

Next Steps

What are the next steps for your project? How can you improve it?

1) User testing & surveys feedback

Our next step is to put the prototype in front of real users, maybe at another hackathon or careers fair. We want to further understand how they naturally take notes, remember follow-ups, and manage post-event overwhelm.

Through user testing we can gather feedback on what features are most useful, where the UX can improve, and how to make it more effective. We need to ensure we are genuinely reducing cognitive load—not adding to it.

2) Integration in Linkedin

We have currently implemented our prototype as a chrome extension but we would like to integrate it with LinkedIn as shown in the UI demo.