Auxiliar

About the Product

Auxiliar is a platform for student freelancers to collaborate, share ideas, seek assistance on projects and look for projects to be a part of. This initiative is believed to bring out the creative and innovative side of college students and boost their entrepreneurship skills. It is also believed to help students financially while juggling their studies.

Project Duration

January 2021 – June 2021

The Problem

Student freelancers often turn down job offers due to overly scheduled projects, as there are limited labour in their area of job. Besides that, those who lack experience resort to hours of research, as they lack the advantage of referring to experienced employees. Furthermore, there is no platform where all their work can be showcased to make great impact on the likeliness of a collaboration.

The Goal

The project aims to design a web-application for freelancers, particularly students of higher education institution to collaborate with one another.

My Role

UX Researcher and Designer for a web-application of Auxiliar, from concept to delivery.

My Responsibilities

Conduct interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibilities, and iterating on designs.

User Research: Summary

I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to understand the users I’m designing for and their needs. A primary user group identified through research was student freelancers who need help for their projects and some sort of expertise from an experienced individual.

This user group confirmed initial assumptions of a lack of platform for students or inexperienced freelancers to collaborate and learn from each other. Other user problems included not a platform to showcase experiences besides social media, and finding projects without experience.

Personas & Problem Statements

Problem Statement

Eric is a busy college student and a part time freelance developer who needs a way to gather trusty labors and a platform to discuss issues he face in his work with someone more experienced.

Eric

Age: 21
Education: Online College
Hometown: Oxford, England
Family: Parents & 2 sibling
Occupation: Full time student

I love expressing my creativity and always looking for new opportunities to explore!

Goals

To learn and showcase new skills in college.
To get more clients and expanding business through freelance.

Frustrations

“As a student and a freelancer, I find it difficult to juggle multiple clients. I need labor for cheap cost.”
“Sometimes, I’m not sure about new projects that I pick up and clients asks for new features.”
“I wish there was a place where I can discuss things I don’t understand with someone who is experienced.”

Eric is a student in a local college and also a part time freelance developer. His business is very successful and at times overwhelming. He is good with marketing which helps get clients, however, he lacks the time as he goes for classes most days. Eric wants to keep his business and excel in his studies at the same time.

Competitive Audit

An audit of a few competitor’s products provided direction on gaps and opportunities to address with the Freelancers collaboration app.

Ideation

I did a quick ideation exercise to come up with ideas for how to address gaps identified in the competitive audit. My focus was specifically on collaboration and team discussions.

Sitemap

With the app designs completed, I started work on designing the responsive website. I used the Auxiliar sitemap to guide the organizational structure of each screen’s design to ensure a cohesive and consistent experience across devices.

Digital Wireframes

Moving from paper to digital wireframes made it easy to understand how the platform could help solve the user pain points and enhance user experience. Prioritizing the goal and user pain points were essential to creating these wireframes.

Low-Fidelity Prototype

Using the completed set of digital wireframes, I created a low-fidelity prototype. The primary user flow I connected was mock place order, so the prototype could be used in a usability study.

View Auxiliar’s low-fidelity prototype.

Usability Study: Parameters

Study Type

Unmoderated usability study

Location

Malaysia, Remote

Participants

5 participants

Length

20 - 30 minutes

Usability Study: Findings

Task Priority

Users are looking to sort tasks the team has based on priority to work more efficiently.

Member Roles

Users need a way to assign and change roles of members in a certain project accordingly.

Community Discussion

Users are looking for a platform to discuss topics of interests besides a chat room to engage and interact doubts they may have.

Mockups

Based on the insights from the usability studies, I applied design changes like providing a clear section to manage members’ roles and add priority to the tasks that is being created in a team setting.

Key Mockups

Accessibility Considerations

Initial focus of the home screen on collaboration projects, help define the primary task or action for the user.

Used labels, icons, and consistent buttons to make navigation and features understandable by all age group of people.

Takeaways

Impact

The initiative to create Auxiliar helps student freelancers who hesitates to start their own businesses and reach out for help. It also improves students’ entrepreneurship skills.

One quote from peer feedback: “I love that I can now gain experience in different fields without too long term of a commitment.”

What I learned

Throughout the design process of the collaborative platform, I learned that a good design doesn’t just happen overnight. Through feedback and ideas from various sources, I was able to accomplish and grow from one iteration to the other until the final product.

Next Steps

Conduct another round of usability studies to validate whether the pain points users experienced have been effectively addressed.

Conduct more user research to determine any new areas of need or pain point that was overlooked before.

Auxiliar

Project Overview

Understanding the User