Creating a strategy to launch a new platform
The client came to us with an idea to build a comprehensive platform that caters specifically to the underserved population. Their vision includes bridging the gap by providing accessible opportunities for finding jobs, securing affordable housing, gaining education, and earning rewards all in one place.
My role
Product / UX Design & Strategy
The team
Project Manager, Chief Experience Officer, and myself
OVERVIEW
A team of seasoned and new entrepreneurs approached us to help them build their vision.
Context
Kick-off meeting
The kick-off was a 5-hour meeting. I decided to incorporate a problem-framing workshop to align the team and to give some structure. The challenge arose from the fact that while the client and Chief Experience Officer had a face-to-face meeting while the project manager and I were working remotely. To address the situation where not all team members would have laptops, I opted for the clients to write on post-it notes. These notes were then placed on a whiteboard by the CXO for everyone's visibility.
From this exercise a clear problem statement was framed which was later revised by the client:
Misfortunate populations dealing with adversities need life changing resources and opportunities during and after overcoming hardships because there is a lack of support, direction, and hope in their path to success. How might we create a lifelong community of engagement and impressions that these users can trust, and provide the tools to continue their education, work on their personal development, and access opportunities curated just for them to advance their life path?
Problem statement
What are the challenges?
Multiple partners
Defining a niche
Agreeing on an MVP
As we delved deeper into the project, we swiftly comprehended the sheer magnitude of its scale, with multiple partners involved. The task at hand seemed daunting, and it became apparent that in order to navigate through the complexity, we needed to focus on carving out a specific niche. The client's abundance of financial resources proved to be a hindrance in narrowing down the target market and reaching a consensus on the minimum viable product.
RESEARCH
Getting acquainted with the users / end users
We spent a couple of sessions working on personas based on the client’s vision.
When things started to go sideways
Over the course of the sessions, our team encountered some confusion as we began identifying potential partners for our client. Both the project manager and I have invested considerable time and effort into researching data to develop accurate personas and understand the end users’ challenges and goals. However, during our collaborative sessions, we discovered contradictory elements that left us perplexed. It appears that the client's vision, which served as the foundation for our persona development, may have been incomplete or inconsistent. This discrepancy has caused some uncertainty within our team as we navigate through the partner identification process. Since we were committed to resolving these contradictions and ensuring that our final selection aligns seamlessly with our client's objectives, we shared our concerns. After a heated conversation, the client understood the significance of being in alignment.
ACTION
Getting aligned after the storm: Becoming Organized
After aligning on the partners front and building trust with the client, we decided to focus on designing for their biggest market: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). I crafted a survey, and we sent it out to a hundred participants via a third-party website. The goal was to understand what resources SNAP offers depending on the participants’ geographical location, what brands people on SNAP are loyal to, the order of importance in terms of housing, job, and community needs, and how much they want to educate themselves.
At a crossroads to determine our MVP
At this pivotal crossroads, our team must carefully navigate the balance between acquiring the necessary information about the client's partners' engagement while also providing the client with a tangible representation of their vision to effectively communicate and gain support from the partners. Instead of rushing to deliver a minimum viable product (MVP) by the original deadline, I suggested creating a prototype that showcases our client's vision and can be used in their sales presentation.
Vision prototype
I created a clickable prototype for the client to present to SNAP.
HERE ARE SOME SCREENS
Laying out options for MVP
Explaining the benefits of launching with an MVP we emphasized to the client the importance of including only essential features. I took the initiative with the help of the project manager to lay out the different options with pros and cons to help the client to make a better informed decision. Here is an example for Jobs and Housing.
To be continued…
Lesson learned
Always make sure everyone (team and all stakeholders) is aligned at the beginning of the project and during the process.