Wileo Consulting Platform - UX Case Study

Wileo Consulting —
A freelancing platform
based in Australia.

Wileo Pty Ltd is a consulting company founded in 2014. Wileo Consulting has over 60 years of experience in Project Management, Engineering Management, and Consultancy.

Check Website

Career

Wileo Consulting
Contract
Nov 2020 - Apr 2021 · 6 mos

Responsibility

Value Propositions Design
Competitors Research
UX Research
UX Modeling
Interaction Design
User Interface Design
User Experience Design

Teams

1 Product Designer
2 Marketers
1 UX Writer
1 Program Manager
4 Developers
2 CEO/Co-Founder

Tools

Figma
Miro
Notion
Google Drive Suite

Introduction

Wileo works closely with independent Australian consultants and experts in their fields. This helps Wileo think outside the box and develop an innovative, sustainable, non-bidding platform connecting competent and skilled individuals to large Australian organizations.

But there are some obstacles:

The engineering consultants are looking for high-quality projects and a community of experts.

The clients are looking for highly skilled consultants to join their teams.

Wileo is concerned about the operating cost of achieving these goals/needs.

After six months, we managed as a team "Marketer Team, UX Writer, UX designers, and Developer Team" to tackle all the business/users issues and get the final design of the platform for both personas.

We planned to have two phases for our platform.

First Phase

Promote our values and invite consultants to join our consultant base.

Second Phase

The beta version of our platform.

01

Discovery

Stakeholder Interview

Understanding the product, the business objective, and the users’ needs should begin from the problem space, and that was my first step.

QUSTIONS WAS ABOUT:

1. Business Objective
2. Channel
3. Target Audience
4. Brand Pillars
5. Competitors
6. Key Metrics

Discovery

User Research: Survey

I collaborated with Ivana Trajkovska -Marketer- to evaluate the surveys for clients and consultants; The questions that led to creating the study were:

FOR THE CLIENT:

1. What are their considerations and criteria for the consultant they want?
2. What would be their preferred engagement model?
3. What is their company's procurement process for sourcing engineering and project management resources?

FOR THE CONSULTANT:

1. What are their hurdles to not presenting an offer/bid to those parties?
2. What do they value the most at work?
3. What are the essential attributes of the host firm you would look for as a freelancer/consultant?

We used “Typeform” to share these surveys on LinkedIn.

Survey Planning for Consultant and Client

We shared it on Linkedin to get more responses.

02

Define

Affinity Diagram

I used Affinity Diagram to gather quotes and user response notes from different user groups for Clients and Consultants.

Define

User Personas

We have about five user groups for consultants and three for clients. Still, the budget and data we collected in the first phase of the research were scarce. So we decided to focus on a user group for each target audience.

A Technical Expert — Consultant

A Director — Client

Define

User Journey Map

I used attached two different elements to the user journey besides actions and opportunities.

Operating Cost

This was one of Wileo's concerns, and I helped them to think about how they could handle each step in the user journey.

Job Stories

To reduce bias, I tried to understand the usage context and attach it to the user journey to ensure that the journey was relevant to the user persona.

A Technical Expert — User Journey Map

A Client — User Journey Map

Ashton Baker — Problem Statement

Ashton Baker is a careful Senior Rail Specialist Who Needs to establish a long-term partnership with a high-quality client To grow a strong industry reputation and fulfills all his family commitments.

Renata Kul — Problem Statement

Renata Kul is an overwhelmed VP of Sales Who Needs to manage each
project's financial aspects within a contract carefully To monthly report to the accountant about each project.

Define

Value Propositions Design

Once I articulated the problem statement for each persona, I collaborated with the stakeholders to think about how our product met their underserved needs and to establish a product-market fit.

A Technical Expert — Value Propositions Design

A Client — Value Propositions Design

03

Ideation

My Ideation Process:

1. Planning the Workspace

I arranged with the stakeholders and my team a time to conduct the workshop.

2. Introduce the problem to the participants

I ensured that everyone had the space to think individually without letting others distract his thinking.

3. Give everyone five sticky notes and five dots

I set a timer to generate the ideas within.

4. Dot voting session and then we discussed the most proper solution from each participant's perspective

HMW Statement — Client

HMW help users manage and deliver the project successfully on the platform?

Ideation Workshop

HMW Statement — Wileo

HMW screening new clients and consultants to join our platform?

Ideation

Competitors Audit

Most primary competitors had a complex onboarding process that required us to be based in a specific country, and using the platform took a long process.

As an investigator, to understand how they onboard new clients and consultants, I tried many ways to gather information about the problem I was trying to solve.

THE METHODS I USED:

1. Watching training videos about "how to use the platform" to gather information about and take screenshots of their platform.
2. Analyzing the published website content to get information about that topic.
3. Pageflows Website was an excellent tool to get screenshots and videos from the Expert360 platform, which was from our primary competitors.

RESPONSIBLITY AND COLLABORATION:

I collaborated with Ivanka -our marketer- to get this activity done.
1. My responsibility was gathering user input about creating or applying to new projects.
2. She was responsible for gathering information about the screener process for clients and consultants.
3. We also collaborated in gathering the content theme our client uses to communicate with their audience. We shared these insights with the UX writer.

Our Competitors

04

Design

Information Architecture

IA is the backbone of the design. A solid information architecture connects the users with the content and the context. To ensure I provide vital IA, I created and collaborated on these deliverables:

Userflow

∙ Client
∙ Consultant
∙ Wileo Admin Panal

Sitemap

∙ Client
∙ Consultant
∙ Wileo Admin Panal

UX Writing

I collaborated with UX writer to create content inventroy; and framework.

Wireframing

After I finished these three activities; I started in designing a mid-fi prototype.

Information Architecture

Userflow

CLIENT USERFLOW:

Onboarding

Create New
Project

Invite and Hiring Consultant

Track the project Process & Recieve the deliverables & End the contract

CONSULTANT USERFLOW:

Onboarding Process for the Consultant

Submit a Proposal to a Project

Hiring Process, Logging Time and Getting Paid Flow

Getting a help: Community forum

Information Architecture

Sitemap

∙ Client
∙ Consultant
∙ Wileo Admin Panal

Information Architecture

Wireframing

I started in designing a mid-fi prototype to test the solutions early with the users.

Client Wireflow

Consultant Wireflow

Design

Style Guide

Based on Wileo Consultant Brand Guidelines, I created a style guide to ensure designing consistent visual elements across the platform.

Style Guide

Design (Final Solution)

Hi-fi Prototype

Design

Landing Page

Based on the decision we took during our discovery phase. The platform will be launched in two stages.

First Phase

We aim to promote our service using this landing page in this phase.

Second Phase

Design

Consultant System

Three states of dashboards to break the onboarding tasks into pieces

To help users and make it easier for them to enter their information.

Submit a Proposal for a Project

Hiring Process, Logging Time, and Getting Paid Flow

Profile, Settings, Community Forum, and Help Center

Design

Client System

Onboarding

Create New
Project

Invite or Hiring Consultant & Track The Project Progress

05

Testing

For transparency: The testing wasn't a part of the project scope, but I did it internally with consultants I know personally to cover most edge cases and
usability issues.

Testing

Usability Testing

The testing is in two rounds, one on Mid-Fi Prototype to let the participants focus on the core elements of the design, such as 'Content, the placement of elements, etc.' and one on the Hi-fi prototype to focus on visuals.

ISSUES:

1. Technical Terms
2. Guides
3. Inbox Actions

Technical Terms

The technical terms made it harder for users to understand the difference and the service that Wileo is providing; I supported this with icons to help the users instantly understand its meaning.

Guides

One of the things we found in the evaluation phase is that users don't know Wileo criteria to accept the published project, so we provided guides to follow when entering details.

Inbox Actions

We found that the flow of going to the proposal or hiring a consultant after discussing the project from Inbox is inefficient. So we attached actions to the Inbox to quickly go to the next step.

06

Hands Off

Developer Handing Off

After I finished the design, I used two methods to collaborate with Dev and hand off the design specs.

HANDS-OFF METHODS:

1. Share the Design Specs and User Flow
2. Support Users By Sharing HTML and CSS Notes

Hands Off

HTML and CSS Notes

Implementation Audit

✱

Keynotes

Operation and Development Effort & Cost

Considering the operating costs in The design is an important activity you must consider in the Product design process. This activity helps to focus more on the cost of the solutions and to differentiate between the current solutions and alternatives for the issue you are solving.

The user journey I created helped us involve stakeholders' thoughts in the user journey; besides the job stories, we managed to consider the context of usage, the cost, and the user's need.

Keynotes

Pragmatism

Every designer should put themself into the shoe of the stakeholders and put perfectionism aside to start thinking right. Every project has its challenges, and it is the designers' responsibility to be flexible and adaptable to address these constraints.

At the project's beginning, the stakeholders planned to use a theme template for WordPress to implement the solution without taking a considerable amount of time. The challenge I faced was customizing the theme to achieve users' needs. So I collaborated with the developers to ensure that the design was easy to implement.

Contact

Phone: +20 111 99 48 699
Email: hello@abdelazez.co