PROJECT
Connect link
Internship
Gamified web application to level up your business journey
UX PROCESS
Introduction
Objective
Problem
Research
Ideation
Wireframes
User Testing
Results
Final Iterations
Lessons Learned
PROJECT
How might we help entrepreneurs level up their startups?
Skills
Product Design
User Testing
Empathy
Tools
Figma
Notion
Trello
My Role
UX Design intern designing a solution for struggling entrepreneurs
Objectives
My goal of this project was to solve the challenges entrepreneurs face when starting a business by enabling them to complete critical milestones in their journey faster.
Overall, my final designs have increased the average task completion rate of critical points from 37% to 90%.
Final Designs
Problem
Majority of entrepreneurs face challenges and obstacles while building and growing their business, and products.
Goal
To create a platform for small business owners that guides users through each phase of the business development journey. This will enable users to reduce friction and increasing the success of their launch.
Pain Points Takeaway: Entrepreneurs had difficulties understanding the sequence of actions they should be taking to find help
Market Research
To ensure our platform appealed to users, I dived into a gamification aspect and did supplemental research to understand how to create that unique experience for users that felt productive, rewarding, and coming back for more.
Understanding common ways other gamification sites enable players to feel motivated gave me an understanding of common flows. This helped me define which solutions to include in my design.
Takeaways
After examining various game “milestone completion” sites, I realized Connect Link needed:
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Strategy: Users should be prompted to focus on completing key milestones to ensure a strategic progression through the platform.
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Customization: No business is the same. All users should be able to customize their journey on the platform that’s specific to their business.
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Fun: Transform the serious business development process into an enjoyable and rewarding experiencing using gamification elements.
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Resources: Tailored specifically to each user’s business, and easy to find.
Ideation
I created several user flows that intertwined to ensure they user journey was well-thought out. I created dashboard flows, creating a business flow, saving resources flows, and of course, the user game flow for completing tasks and milestones.
Create New Business Flow
Each user who comes to Connect Link may be at vastly different stages in their business development. My flow caters to two types of users: those who already have progress made and will be able to choose what milestones they need help achieving, and those who comes to us fresh and get the whole experience.
Users can also choose their business type, and this will tailor specific resources to them throughout their journey. Users can also select how quickly they want to launch their business, and we’ll break up each milestone respectively to help them reach their goals in time.
Game UI Flow
This flow illustrates how users will complete tasks and milestones. Tasks will be completed in a loop similar to game mechanics and quests, where users are prompted to complete a task, receive rewards, and freedom to continue until they reach their goal or stop to take a break.
Wireframes
The user flows introduced new wireframes inspired by common patterns found in market research.
User Testing
Goal
Enable entrepreneurs to quickly complete business tasks and find resources on their own.
Impact
Increases business launch rate -> Expands customer referral rate for company
Tool
Figma
# Entrepreneurs Tested
10
Metrics
Task Completion Rate
Satisfaction Rate
Qualitative Feedback
Tasks
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Choose how quickly you want to launch your business
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Locate how to continue your tasks from where you left off
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Complete Milestone 3: Task 1
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Find articles for Milestone 2
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Recover your rewards using the Redeem tool
Results
Overall, my final designs have increased the average task completion rate of critical points from 37% to 90%.
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Entrepreneurs had a positive and intuitive experience completing tasks.
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The resource page was easy to find
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Gamification features were helpful and motivating
Final Iterations
Next Steps
Coming up next, I plan to run another usability tet to measure task completion rate. The goal is to enable entrepreneurs to complete critical business milestones quickly. By increasing the task completion rate, the number of referrals to Connect Link is increased and expands company revenue.
2024 Update: I’m still designing at Connect Link, but working on different products now, centered around community building and networking.
Lessons Learned
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Designing familiar experiences - taking familiar user experience patters from other websites (eg. to do lists) helps the entrepreneur onboard faster and use the product more effectively.
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Asking for feedback on collaboration process with cross-functional partners. I’ve worked with the front end engineering team and leads to improve my design hand-off process. This helped save time between development and QA and improving my design documentation and created a shared component library.
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Over-communicate in everything to all stakeholders and never make assumptions. I worked with other designers, product managers, users through usability testing.