The Vision.

The vision was of a new product “Mohar” [name changed] which would be a social media platform for the new age socially savvy and responsible generation to e-meet with their friends, trusted relatives & contacts and share & exchange information and tips on personal finances.

The aim was to create an active interactive user platform and foster financial awareness amongst the users with a focus on personal finances.

The User Base.

The user base to be targeted was the nation’s users [as against international users] as the company has a strong “Make within the Country” ideology.

My Role.

I joined the team as the only UX designer during their user research phase. My role was to assess market needs and design a product that will fulfil the user needs while fostering the Company’s business objectives. I was working very closely with a product manager who helped me identify users for my research and reach out to them. He would also be taking over the user usability testing from me once we build the infrastructure that we can use for the testing.

The Starting Trouble.

The biggest challenge was lack of enough time for research as the Company wanted an accelerated Go To Market Strategy. The strategy was to show the product to the users as early as possible so that they can use user feedback and iterate into a better usable product.

Keeping the company strategy in mind, we needed to quickly either define the product and then the target segment that will use the product OR identify the target segment and build the product for their needs.

The challenge associated with defining a product first and then the Target User Segment was that within the potential users there was a huge variation in terms of social strata and financial capabilities and hence the ensuing interest in financial awareness [which was the objective of the envisioned product]. So creating a product that would cater to the wide range of Target User Segments posed the same challenge as designing for everyone plus the added challenge of finding the users to test the product.

One needs to start somewhere.

So to resolve this dilemma of whether to design the product first and then define the target user segment or to define the target user segment first and then the product I decided to speak to users and find out. There was some user research done before I joined the team but it wasn’t documented in a shareable way and so my first task was to gather and stitch together the scattered pieces of older research and create a new user research plan based on it. What I found out in my interviews was that one segment of users was eager to be involved in the development of the envisioned product whereas the other segments lacked the resources [time, energy, funds, willingness and understanding of the purpose of the product].

User Group Defined.

So I decided to work with the first set of Target users. A quick definition of the user group segment I was working with went as follows: It was a group of users who are socially responsible users [who actively create and maintain their social status and also accept accountability for their actions there] who have definite reasons to pursue, have access to minimal funds required and are capable of visualizing the benefits of the available financial instruments.

What were my users telling me?

The Feature List.

Based on the HMW statements and the business objectives of the product we enlisted the possible feature list Ø News feed to keep the user abest with relevant information

• Ability to search for and follow other users that match certain desirable criteria

• Ability to choose strategy and products that the user uses

• Ability to compare users strategies and products with other similar users

• Ability to view other users strategies and products of other similar users

• Ability to setup transaction platform at a click or few clicks

• Ability to get and provide advice and support it with evidence

• Ability to verify advice with evidence

• Ability to create and join groups based on group objectives, older connections, alumni, etc.

• Ability to discuss all related topics in these groups created/joined

• Ability to incorporate/integrate other existing tools into our platform

• Ability to import and share information on the platform with other users

The Site Map.

To support these selected features I built the site map depicted below As mentioned before company strategy was to recruit the first wave of users and test the product with them as fast and as early as possible. I proposed that we recruit the users by creating sketches of the product showing a possible façade of the product to the users and gathering their contacts and interest.

The Personas and the HMW Statements.

Next I show how the analysis of these personas [who they are and how they think and behave] helped me develop the HMW statements for the product. The HMW would later go on to inform the products features and sketches.

Wireframes to Recruit Users for First Review.

I sketched out and wire-framed the Profile screen, the Home screen and the Add post screen for the team to help the Company recruit users.

Final Recommendations.

My assignment with the company was time-bound and had come to an end by the end of this. I left the company with the following recommendation for further enhancement of the product features.

In addition to the usual UX/UI recommendations I provided the following recommendations and directions to the product:

• I strongly recommended that the product have a reason bigger than social media platform to the users something like “come for a purpose and stick around for the network”

• I recommended to elegantly embed research elements/resources into the discussion threads that will provide not just a platform for discussion for the users but also comp based suggested food for thought for every though they put into the system

• Also strongly recommended making this value add tool attractive to young populaation also and catching them in college

• Final but not least recommendation was to put in a rating system that encourages users to attract followers