SaaS MVP Design for Social Investment Platform

Impactraction is a two-sided SaaS platform that enables social entrepreneurs to design, manage, and measure their projects, while investors can connect with entrepreneurs, manage their deal flow and portfolio, and track the impact of their investments.

Method & Tools

Adobe XD

Adobe Illustrator

Role

UI/UX Designer

Timeline

August, 2020

(3 weeks)

Background

Impactraction is a SaaS platform with a two-sided user base of social entrepreneurs and investors. Entrepreneurs can design, manage, and measure their projects, while investors can connect with entrepreneurs, manage their deal flow and portfolio, and monitor the impact of their investments.
On the Entrepreneur side of this platform, there are four phases in total: Design Project, Apply Funds, Impact Measurement, and Tell Your Story. I was in charge of the Design Project phase.
To complete the project successfully within a very short timeframe, I had to prioritize the essential design phases and focus on key steps.

Project Objective

Based on the interview with Ashraful, the CEO of Impactrio, I developed the project objectives.

Develop the Design Project phase of the Entrepreneur side of the platform, with the goal of helping social entrepreneurs create investment-ready plans. This includes building a minimum viable product (MVP) and incorporating gamified features to increase user engagement within 15 days

User Experience Goal

The goal is to help a user, who is not digitally savvy or a business professional, go through every step of the project creation process - from ideation to investment-ready plan - in a collaborative and intuitive way.

Identify Problem

User Stories

As a user, I want to be able to easily navigate menus so that I can quickly and confidently find the information I need.
As a user, I want to see the progress in a series of clear and intuitive steps so that I can focus on the task and avoid frustration.
As a user, I want to be able to collaborate seamlessly with team members so that we can work more efficiently and complete the business canvas successfully.
As a user, I want to enjoy the process of answering over 80 questions so that all team members are motivated to proactively engage and successfully complete the Design Project phase.
As a user, I want to have access to help guide about the business canvas so that I can quickly learn about it and save time researching.
As a user, I want to easily share my progress with stakeholders so that they can track the project's progress and provide feedback.

To understand the needs and goals of users, I started to describe user stories analyzing the *personas, user narrative, and the current state of the design. By using user stories in this phase, I was able to create solutions that are truly user-centered and that meet the needs and goals of users.

* Personas and user narratives were referenced from the work done by previous designers

Solutions

Reorganize the menu structure by dividing it into main menus and user menus, providing users with a convenient and centralized location to access user-specific functions.
Create a Dashboard page that includes a graphic representing the four steps of creating a business canvas, a progress gauge showing the current stage progress from 0 to 100%, and your task progress, which shows how many tasks you have done, assigned, and are in progress.
Add collaboration features to enable working together on each canvas page, and include a Notes section for team members to leave messages.
Incorporate gamification to make the project canvas process less tedious for users. This includes a quest-based system, where each of the 80 questions is named a quest, and users earn experience points (XP) for answering them. Additionally, a leaderboard and user nicknames based on levels are incorporated to encourage competition and a sense of accomplishment.
Add a help tooltip and a raising hand function to notify team members where help is needed.
Add an export function on the canvas detailed page to allow users to export the canvas in a convenient format.

Apply findings to the design

Reflection

In the 10-week timeframe, I was in charge of building the brand identity, landing page, SaaS MVP design, and the design system for other UX designers. This left me with little time for a deep understanding of user and competitor research. Despite this, I successfully met the project objective and UX goal of building a feasible MVP by incorporating gamified features within 3 weeks. In the future, I aim to plan realistically and set clear expectations with the project manager regarding my availability and capacity to ensure that I can devote enough time to each design phase and avoid compromising on essential steps.