Fundsbridge offers investors the opportunity to invest in profitable businesses across multiple sectos . I Lead the UX for simplifying user-flows, user research and immersive UI experience.
I designed an end-to-end mobile app which enables investors to easily invest in any business of their choice spanning through real estate, agriculture, oil and gas, telcos, etc
Fundsbridge aim to solve that problem by developing a simple and easy to use platform where buyers/investors can invest in vetted businesses on the Fundsbridge platform.
On an annual basis 1.3 million Nigerians are pushed below the poverty line due to health related issues , Nearly 72% of the health expenditure of Nigerians are paid out of pocket forcing people to choose between their health, housing, education and even food for their children.
I was born and raised in Nigeria and this was a challenge I personally faced. It was difficult to get access to good healthcare. Good healthcare is very expensive and the good hospitals have limited resources.
An app that takes into consideration different demographics of traders that needs a reliable and secured platform for their precious metals trading.
I conducted and executed the 8-weeks design sprint using the GV method. This included user research, mapping, wireframing, deciding, prototyping, and testing.
In making this project, I went through design thinking approach for systematically identifying the user needs in order to ideate the solution that given lasting value for the customer.
The first thing to do at this phase is understanding the problem we are trying to solve, gathering a deep understanding about user needs, their pain points and motivations. To have a clearer understanding of this we need to adopt several research methodologies to capture exact needs of users driven by data collected. To best collect this data accurately, I adopted the qualitative research methodologies, as it allows the users to describe exact pain points and narrow down problem areas, while conducting the research.
I also conducted a quantitative research by distributing the questionnaire for gaining more insight and gathered the user’s background. Synthesizing these research, I found that the main ways investors invest in businesses is through closed community reach with each other and in organizations with close colleagues.
Half the duration of this project is continued interviewing process, I kept iterating and doing some investigation into existing products that best addresses the user needs.
I began by breaking down the prompt into questions I wanted to address:
1. What is a connection? What kinds of connections are valuable to students?
2. How do students discover and connect to classmates? What are they seeking in these interactions?
3. What features does LinkedIn currently offer to help discover and connect with classmates? Are these effective, and do students form valuable connections?
I spoke to current students in various majors, guiding the conversations with these questions. I then created an affinity diagram with post-its to organize key ideas that came out of these conversations.
Facebook groups are the most common way that students connect with each other. These are more effective for larger groups and communication once you are in them, but there is no effective way to discover these groups. For example, I can search for groups within CMU, but these groups aren’t organized in my results. There is a “discover groups” feature, but suggestions are generally open groups for a wide variety of purposes (i.e. selling items, sublets, etc). Key features were the ability to reach out to anyone for free, ability to invite others to pages or groups, and signing up for updates.
Overall, there is no consistent contact method and the posts are very text-heavy, and one person is often representing a whole organization, even though they have a lot of elements in common: role(s) needed, organization/project, contact info, and further information. I wondered if I could find a more organized way to present this kind of information.
With a more comprehensive idea of what questions there were to answer, the next step was to conduct 1-on-1 user interviews.
The goal — gain an understanding of what motivates people to change their health, what products they are using or have tried to use to improve their health, and what obstacles/pain points they encounter.
Target Users
What was your experience trading precious metals?
How did you learn about the app you used to purchase your metals?
What caused stress in the process?
How many accounts do you have connected to your trading account?
How do you feel about the process of keeping track with market updates?
Are there ways that a website has helped you?
What do you like about your current trading app?
What is the biggest pain point you experience trading?
Too much to keep track of. End up forgetting to check their apps.
Incorporate different goals for different user levels — beginner/novice/advanced. Motivation driven by achieving goals and obtaining rewards.
Incorporate component of the psyche. Users want deeper meaning.
Motivated by family and friends; Friendly competition.
Once the key take-aways from the user base were better understood, early sketches were created to begin an attempt to solve pain points and ship a product that performs the tasks users need. HMW statements were used in this process to keep early designs focused on specific tasks:
In this process, I made a site map and user flows for critical routes to aid users navigation and also to guide the usability design processes.
After a round of Guerilla Testing (done with POP by Marvel) with the initial sketch design and 5 participants, there were a few pain points discovered in early sketches that were addressed and resolved prior to wireframing.
With the product taking shape, it was time to turn to its brand and style. In order to get a consistent visual message which resonates with and informs the user, I created a style guide which was influenced by the brand guidelines
With the structure and style set through the work done with the usability design and visual design steps, I could start working on the high-fidelity designs. Using a UI kit and the style guide in conjunction with the wireframes from earlier stages, I worked out issues for it to be both usable, fit within the style guide, and accessible.
Prototyping
After designing a few high fidelity pages, I ran them through an accessibility audit to check for color and contrast and screen reader readability, this passed the WACG 2.0 guidelines.
Accessibility Audit
After designing a few high fidelity pages, I ran them through an accessibility audit to check for color and contrast and screen reader readability, this passed the WACG 2.0 guidelines.
Next Steps
I’d explore further a lot of the concepts I played around with in my sketches and low-fidelity wireframes. The feature is built around the idea of collaboration on projects and organizations, so I wanted to explore the idea of displaying these in students’ profiles, which would be beneficial in helping students who may not have much professional experience and feel overwhelmed by LinkedIn to begin building LinkedIn profiles, which will benefit them in their job search.
I’d also like to explore the onboarding process — to help students understand why this is a useful app and have them fill out their interests, as well as working out the event and people tabs.
Learnings
The process of applying a Design Thinking mindset— identify a problem space, define an unresolved problem, ideate solutions from scratch, and then prototype/test those solutions (while maintaining a human-centered approach) was rewarding and an excellent opportunity to grow as a UX researcher and designer.
As someone who would enjoy personally using the app I designed, there were certainly challenges with creating solutions that reflected the users’ wants and needs without projecting my own assumptions on to the project.
Collecting data with research, user interviews, and usability testing was paramount to maintaining focus on the user and staying unbiased to the design process. Additionally, frameworks like JTBD and HMW statements were integral in keeping this project on track as the design process evolved.
Future iterations would include the design of features such as: talking to an expert, using a built-in calendar, inputting and logging data, and further development of the mental-health areas of the app.
Link to the competition
Link to the medium post
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