A marketplace app for female entrepreneurs to hire freelance marketing experts in a cost-effective way to launch and grow their businesses.
Elevate
Problem Statement
Female startup owners need an effective way to find trusted and qualified marketing experts to help with their businesses. With limited budget, they often take on multiple roles and can only utilize experts in an ad-hoc, flexible structure.
Solution
To develop a responsive expert web app for female small business and startup owners to connect and hire trusted experts in various areas of marketing for their businesses.
My Role
This is an academic project developed throughout the UX design course with Career Foundry. I was the sole designer of this project from discovery to final design which allowed me to be fully immersed and have full design and creative control for the development of this responsive app.
Duration
8 months (Oct 2021 - May 2022)
Design Tools
Figma. Photoshop. Canva. Miro.
Functional Requirements
Login / Sign up flow for user profile input and personal info.
An onboarding page for new users to get started
A home dashboard screen with customized content as well as accessing user's own information
Ability to browse experts within different marketing categories, see review ratings and connect and hire experts
Ability to pay for the expert's time - use a secure third-party payment system for users to transact with marketing experts
The Design Process
1.
Discover & Emphasize
2.
Define
User
3.
Ideate & Design
4.
Test
Prototype
5.
Refine
Design
6.
Final
Design
Discover & Emphasize
01.
Competitive Analysis
I wanted to create a platform not only for female entrepreneurs to hire marketing experts but also build a community to support each other, so I analyzed two competitors in the marketplace: FIVERR - a global network of remote freelancers for business and Start Up Nation - a networking and resource platform for entrepreneurs.
I looked at their market profile and performed SWOT Analysis to gain a better understanding of the competitive landscape. I also took a closer look at the usability, layout, navigation, CTAs, etc. to evaluate the overall functionality of their applications.
* I later narrowed down the scope of the project to hold-off on developing the community element to avoid scope creep.
User Stories
I created user stories to describe what the users aim to achieve and why. These provide potential feature descriptions and requirements for the app.
User Research
To gain better understanding of the target users who are female age 35+ with several years of work experience and savings, and are at the early stage of running their own businesses, I created and conducted a user survey and later performed user interviews based on the survey responses in order to:
Understand how female small business owners get marketing support for their business
Learn about the process and criteria small business owners use to hire marketing experts
Collect data on resources (websites and apps) startup owners use for marketing support
Document any pain-points in their search and receiving of marketing resources
Gauge the need for marketing support for small business owners
Key Findings
Small business owners often use freelance marketers or agency as needed.
They are often frustrated with hiring unqualified person who over promised and under delivered.
Referral from trusted people who are in the same industry is very important in hiring a marketing expert.
Common marketing experts hired are graphic designers, website developers, social media managers and photographers.
Define Users
02.
User Persona
Based on the results of my user surveys and interviews, I created two user personas:
Lisa, The Do-It-All
"I get busy with all the tactical executions and don't spend enough time on marketing strategy"
Sheryl, The Delegator
"I don't have the bandwidth to take on all areas of my business"
They represent two main target users and differ from how they would utilize the marketing support based on their workstyle, financial resources and business needs.
User Journey Maps
After establishing Lisa and Sheryl as the personas, I created user journey maps based on specific scenarios to better understand the process, thoughts and pain points for them to achieve their goals.
User Task Flows
I then performed user task analysis to identify their experiences, and created task flows based on their objectives, to better understand the actions they take within the app to achieve their goals.
Here's Lisa's user flow based on her objective:
"As a busy entrepreneur, I want a trusted source I can rely on to get the marketing support I need so that I can spend my time more effectively on my business."
Lisa’s User Flow
Ideate & Design
03.
Site Map
With the user journeys and task flows in mind, I began to layout the site map that shows the information architecture for the navigation and content structure of this marketing expert app.
I then utilized online open card sorting (OptimalSort) to gain feedback from a sample of 7 target users and 20 cards to see how well they connect with the categories and features. Here are some key insights:
Instead of using each marketing discipline as its own category, the participants see them grouped under one "marketing services" category.
Participants also expect to see related resources and articles available by each marketing discipline.
Participants grouped most user related activities into one category, 'My Account'.
Several cards can be grouped differently and participants expect to see them under different categories.
Open Card Sorting
One major change took place as I created the low-fidelity wireframes for the app features and functions. I realized that the community aspect of the app is in itself a separate undertaking and outside of the project scope. To avoid scope creep, I removed the community building element from this app, and updated the site map.
Wireframes
I began to design screens for the functionalities and features of the app with low-fidelity wireframes using pencil and paper. This allowed me to quickly design and figure out high level solutions for the app. I then further refined those low-fidelity wireframes in Figma.
To further solidify the design and prepare for usability testing, I introduced more detailed content and images to create mid-fidelity wireframes in grayscale which allowed users to focus on the functionality and usability of the app.
Test Prototype
04.
Usability Testing
After creating the mid-fidelity prototype with key functionalities of Elevate app, I recruited 6 participants for usability testing with the goals of:
Determining if users can navigate the app effectively
Identifying areas that hinder users' ability to accomplish their tasks
Uncovering better ways for users to interact with the app.
Having actual users performing tasks within the Elevate app for the first time, I was able to discover some disconnects, confusions and misinterpretations that I would have not realized, and to correct those issues. Additionally, I've also received some content feedback suggesting that the quality and credibility of the experts are very important in determining whether they would use the app.
Refine Design
05.
Design System & Style Guide
Once the structure, features, functionalities of the app have been updated with findings from the usability tests, I began to focus on the visual design to create a high fidelity prototype.
Brand Personality
Elevate is designed for female entrepreneurs who are looking to hire qualified and trusted marketing experts. A clean professional look that exhibits high quality, trustworthiness and encourages users to activate and take their business to the next level should be the essence of this App.
Brand Voice
Elevate's voice is welcoming, helpful, supportive and professional.
Elevate should present itself as the helpful and go-to resource for start-up entrepreneurs with encouraging, non-intimidating language. The information in Elevate needs to be concise and easy to digest within very limited amount of time.
Elevate should also be as inclusive and accessible as possible.
Design Collaboration
After incorporating the visual design elements and creating the high-fidelity prototype, I was able to share it with my peers via Slack, and received feedback to further fine-tune the Elevate App.
Final Design
06.
Elevate Mobile Mockup
Elevate Mobile Prototype
Try out the prototype...
Final Thoughts
Learnings
This was my first UX design project, learning and going through the design process end-to-end as the sole designer. I have gained valuable knowledge, skills and experiences with a few key takeaways:
Design is to provide solutions to a problem - This seems basic but important to me throughout the process. Keeping this in mind helped me focus on providing value and making the user’s live easier.
Iteration Not Perfection - It's important to focus on creating an MVP with key features and functionalities that can be refined and iterated. Since there are often many solutions to the problem that we are trying to solve, focusing on an MVP can avoid scope creep and get the product in front of the user sooner to course-correct when necessary. This in turn saves time and money.
User Testing Is Crucial - I can research, create assumptions, build hypothesis and come up with potential features and functionalities for my product design. However, I won't know if it really works as intended until putting my design in the hands of the user. Getting user feedback undoubtedly enhances the design, and truly make the product usable and useful.
Future Steps
Since this project was focusing on delivering key features, if I would further develop Elevate, I would continue to test and iterate to enhance current functionalities. I would also build out:
More features and functionalities such as the ability to learn more about other reviewers, and to search and organize marketing articles.
The experience for marketing experts as the user - for them to share their information and portfolio and get hired.
Community building aspect of the app. which would create shared experiences for entrepreneurs to come together and learn from each other. Also to bring entrepreneurs and experts together in a more social and organic way.