Online platform to hire creative brand professionals
A one-month service design project to design and evaluate a business idea
Project type: Freelance project
Role: Service Designer
Tools: Miro, ethnography, user interviews
01
The problem
A product manager contacted me to design a journey of an idea he had.
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Based on his professional background, he decided to create a digital platform that allows companies to hire creative professionals, totally digital.
After some briefing meetings, I noticed that besides his personal knowledge about the market, the project was needing some research about the market, stakeholders, and the user's pains weren't mapped.
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With that in mind, the client agreed that I could conduct a discovery focused to understand those points before creating the user journey and blueprint (deliverables of the project).
02
Research process
First, I did desk research to understand how professionals work and their niches.
After that, I organized the survey of profiles and behaviors, done through Facebook groups, using the technique of netnography, with an analysis of posts, comments, and polls.
User interviews
The recruitment process was made by Facebook, through research on groups. The interview process was online using google meetings, with 10 users.
Through the interviews, empathy maps were created, allowing us to know the target audience, identifying their pains and needs. The maps offer a real view of the users' behaviors, desires, and perceptions.
Guiding questions
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Who are the professionals?
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How do they work?
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What are their pains and expectations?
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​What are the deliverables?
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What do customers want?
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How does contracting work?
The existing tools in the market
To understand the market, I did a Map and analyze the existing tools on the market (their functionalities and objectives).
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The platforms were divided into two categories:
Mapping the functionalities of the tool helped to understand some of the features that were already available in the market, such as posting a job requisition and matching with freelancers' profiles. Even in the Brazilian market, was possible to see companies that were specializing in creative professionals, making it hard for a new platform to differentiate from the others.
03
Insights
After organizing the findings of the interviews and evaluating the opportunities raised on the empathy maps, the client and I talked about how the initial hypothesis of creating a digital platform for hiring freelancers.
| All the users feel that the market works well with the freelance system
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| Being a freelancer designer give the professionals more freedom
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| Having an intermediate platform makes the process difficult and decreases the quality of delivery
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| Companies found it difficult to hire freelancers directly because they worry about the quality and schedule of the process
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| The agency creates more credibility on the project for all the stakeholders
04
Solution
After a meeting with the product owner to present the discovery insights, we did a discussion about how to create a business idea align with the pains and necessities of the users.
| A Design agency in an e-commerce format
Where the freelancers can still do their job in the way that they feel comfortable, but removing the steps they didn´t like.
As the final process, I designed with the project manager a user journey and a service blueprint to understand user's interaction with the product solution, and how to improve the steps during the process.
