Simply Start Mobile App
Simply Start is a mobile app that acts as complete end-to-end business mentorship by pairing entrepreneurs and startups with all the resources they need to succeed. That includes mentors, experts, service providers, investors and even relevant podcasts and other media.
Research
Competitor Analysis
Research began with a competitor analysis of the leading mentorship products on the market. I focused my analysis on a core set of principles (aesthetics, technology integration, reviews and user consensus) which I felt would allow us to best position Simply Start in the market.
User Interviews
I conducted multiple user interviews via Zoom on key persons of interest who operated within the vertical slices that we were targeting and agreed to participate in the research. These included investors, experts, service providers and entrepreneurs. The purpose of these interviews were to understand exactly what each persona would be looking to gain from the app, and to ensure that everyone can benefit from it, not just entrepreneurs.
Sign Up
Signing up to an app can often feel like a lengthy process. Therefore, it was imperative that the sign up process was quick and simple so that users could begin onboarding with minimal time wasted, especially since the target audience for this app are busy entrepreneurs, or investors, who are keen to proceed with bettering themselves or their businesses.
Experts
Experts are app users who have expertise in a particular subject. The app will help to recommend experts to entrepreners based on the information provided during the onboarding process. I designed a comprehensive system for browsing and searching for experts, including the use of filters for more search granulation.
Expert Detail
When viewing an experts profile, you have multiple tabs to view including Experience (see their real-world experience), Reviews (see reviews that other entrepreneurs have left on their profile) and Publications (see any media, blogs or podcasts that the expert has uploaded).
Badges
One of the biggest pain points our users had as entrepreneurs looking for mentorship was the sheer amount of time it would take to sift through worded reviews in order to find an expert they could put their trust in.
I designed a badge system where entrepreneurs could assign badges to experts when reviewing their services. These badges can then be viewed on the profiles of experts and are automatically ordered by number of assignments. This way, entrepreneurs can immediately see what personal qualities each expert has at a glance without having to read through multiple reviews.
Roleplay
One of the most important ways to develop individuals within Simply Start is to perform roleplay events with real investors or experts in order to simulate an actual startup pitch. Below is how I designed the process of booking roleplays into the app.
Learning
The stakeholders at Simply Start wanted to provide a way for users to perform their own learning within the app. I designed an entire ecosystem within the app which incorporates multiple types of media (articles, podcasts & videos) that users can consume at any time. In order to achieve this, I designed how the different forms of media look when browsing, the ability to view details about the media (such as descriptions and who created it), and I even designed a 'player' component which can be reused to display any media that is being viewed.
Search
Since there were so many different indices within the product, we anticipated a comprehensive search function to be paramount for comfortable navigation of the app. In order to design search, I thought about every single category of information that a user could search for and carefully introduced them into the search process.
When search begins, the user is presented with their recent searches in case they tend to search for the same thing over and over again. Additionally, without any search queries at this stage we realistically don't know what they are going to search for so recents was the safest bet.
Once the user begins typing a search query, we can begin presenting them with search query related results - this is where I began introducing the categories into the search which appear beside each search result.
Following on from here, if a user taps one of the search results it is considered a success as the user has found what they are looking for. However, it's possible that the user will cement the search term by either tapping on the top list item which mirrors what they are typing, or by tapping the 'Search' button on the native iOS keyboard. This will take them to the search detail page that I designed. This page breaks down the matching searches from every single category available, presenting each category as a filter at the top of the screen. Therefore, if a user knows they are looking for an expert specifically, they can tap the expert filter. This will then expand a second set of filters where they can further narrow down their search such as Location, Skills, Sectors and more.