Project
MilestonePay
Project Overview
MilestonePay is building the business framework and tools for a digital gig economy based future, ensuring freelancers get paid for the hard work that they do.
Our Academy XI Transform Team was brought on to support MilestonePay by developing a tool to help their users create a workflow for their customers to seamlessly automate their interactions with their customers.
My Role
My role on this project was Define phase squad Lead for a team of 4 designers. I also did a few pieces in other phases when they need help. Some of my key responsibilities included:
Client & Duration
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Client: MilestonePay
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Time Taken: 2.5 weeks
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Support note-taking for 1 on 1 interview
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Export interview insights and transferred them onto an affinity map
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Persona and customer journey
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Proposed Ideation workshop techniques
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User flow and sketching of Proposal studio
Software & Tools
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Miro
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Canva
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Trello
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Hand Sketchting
Problem Statement
Freelancers who feel unmotivated and overwhelmed about the admin process of running a small business need to seamlessly onboard, service and invoice their clients but don’t have a lot of time and don’t know where to begin.
Research Synthesis - Qual & Quan
We knew the freelancers are struggling with their admin process from the client brief, but we didn’t have clear Ideas or specific goals for the freelancer's admin experience to make their workflow better.
"What are their actual paints?" "Which area they are struggling with?"
"What type of autogenerated system are they looking for?"
We synthesised their thoughts, feelings, and actions the findings into a series of key insights.
Research conducted :
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Desktop Research & Competitor analysis
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Survey - 26 x Survey small business owners Response
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1:1 Interviews - 10 freelancers and 6 clients
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We used social media platforms like LinkedIn and word of mouth to gather survey respondents and interview participants.
The key insights:
I was responsible for transferring users' insights to the affinity map by categorising them to find out what is working and what was their pinpoints.
Problem redefined
From the Affinity mapping, their pain points and our key insights pivoted the initial problem statement slightly before. Most of them face difficulty to make contracts and proposals.
What makes their workflow harder was a misunderstanding of a contract between freelancer and client then they ended up not getting proper pay.
Freelancers who feel unsure and disorganised about running a professional business need to stay on top of their tasks but face a lack of time and knowledge.
Persona - Carrissa
Based on the interviews & surveys we came up with two persona which were freelancer and client. However, our primary focus was our freelancer - Clarissa.
Customer Journey
You can see Clarissa struggles to develop a contract and proposal, she also needs to improve her communication process with her clients to avoid misunderstanding when it comes to invoicing time from this journey.
Addressing HMW
We underpinned these themes with the two primary goals that the client had derived from their own user research of - “save time” and “look professional” and refined our problem statement:
Ideation Workshop
As per the client's request, they wanted to see as many ideas we could present. To extend their needs, I proposed the brainstorming Technique to our team, which was "Crazy 4 based on the single word". We all agreed to use this idea in our workshop.
Our team hosted 3 workshops with 7 freelancers and 12 classmates to brainstorm a variety of ideas that could help solve the HMW statements.
We shared the ideas with the client for MVP voting and identified 3 key areas of focus for our last stage of the development process.
Sketches and User Flow
The ideation workshop client voting outcome brought us to user flow and sketches of Proposal studio and contract helper.
I was responsible for all of the sketches on the proposal studio and created the main page for the team.
Did we solve the problems?
The idea is that the Scope Builder Tool could opt into either the proposals or contracts phase to reduce users' stress as well as miscommunication with clients. The format of the tool takes the stress off of the scope building process by treating it like a friendly conversation between colleagues.
Personal Reflections From Project
What did I enjoy...
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Learning about freelancers' admin process
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Developing sketches based on users' needs
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Working with a real-life client first time as UX UI designer
What did I learn...
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How to work with a big team
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Agile works with client in Australia
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Project schedule management within a short period
What I would like to improve...
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Leading a team as a UX UI designer
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Try other research techniques
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Confidence in a presentation