Pinterest to the Rescue
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Almaday
Overview
The Team
Almaday is a curated job marketplace for creative freelancers.
For D2C companies who want to hire the best creative talent to elevate their brands, Almaday is a new creative agency that provides quick, effortless talent matching that is on-brand.
For this project, I was the UX and visual design lead and my objective was to design a website, marketing content, and web application experience for Almaday’s platform.
To help develop the Almaday brand through visual assets and language used throughout the website and web application experience, through until the actual launch of the service.
DURATION
August - October 2019
(3 months)
PRODUCT
Responsive Web App
ROLE
Design Lead
(lead for wireframing + prototyping, all social media + visual assets)
Our team of 4 collaborated daily in a shared office space, where we also had sessions for design thinking + brainstorming, feedback, and concept presentations.
I worked heavily with the Co-founder/Software Developer, to help translate the designs into code.
TEAM MEMBERS
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Co-Founder + Head of Marketing
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Co-Founder + Software Developer
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Business Analyst + Researcher
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(Me) Design Lead
Project Approach
Research and immersion into online/ offline communities
In-depth interviews with 19 freelancers, and 2 employers of freelancers
2 design thinking + brainstorming sessions
Analysis of qualitative data and prioritization of options to prototype
Launch the beta and take in live comments from early users
User Pain Points
To further understand the main problem and pain points in hiring freelancers, my team and I spent time analyzing data + gathering feedback from existing creative freelancers + employers.
COMPANIES (EMPLOYERS OF CREATIVE FREELANCERS)
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Hard to find & vet talent that has the right skills
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Fiverr, Upwork etc. surface loads of freelancers and put burden on employer to filter
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Sometimes employers don’t know what they need
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Need deliverables fast - flexible talent because needs change fast
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CREATIVE FREELANCERS
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Majority of jobs aren’t posted so hard to discover
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Don’t want to give up lots of money to agencies/ platforms
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Freelancers want jobs that are values-aligned
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Right time & salary match
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Want to feel part of the team so that the work feels meaningful
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Hunger for positive feedback from clients, want to feel like they are doing a good job
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New freelancers: struggle to build their client book
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Established freelancers have old client mix - want to mix it up & diversify revenue
Ideation + Brainstorm
Our team approached ideation from a design thinking philosophy. We broke out into brainstorming sessions, using a variety of exercises to think about our main users and innovative solutions to their needs.
The Journey
Almaday didn’t start at the final concept! During my three months working with the team, the main objective shifted a few times, due to external circumstances.
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The following are the previous concepts we explored before landing on the current Almaday concept.
CONCEPT A
A digital community for self-employed women
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Note: Since the main target user was female and we were creating a community, we made this page feel softer with an off-white background
CONCEPT B + C
Iterations on a digital teammate made to equip all freelancers with the burdensome tasks, related to being a freelancer
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Changes: We adjusted the background color, to feel more professional and adjusted the imagery and language to match the new concepts
Before arriving at the final Almaday concept, I designed visual assets for the iterations of landing pages, social media ads + content, from which I took to create the final designs.
The Final Brand
Once landing on a final business objective, the finalized brand was centered around the following characteristics:
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Trust: Trustworthy, candid, fair, sincere, clear and concise, likes meaningful interactions, to the point, discrete, fair, genuine, deep
Team-player: creative, collaborative, team-player
Supportive: generous (with time/ connections), holistic, the “cool older friend”, thoughtful, helpful, proactive
*NOTE: There was a logo, basic color palette, and font already chosen when I joined the team, but no other visual assets.
UI Style Guide
The Outcome
Landing Page
Freelancer Directory
(*with the exception of my photo and the stock images on the landing page and IG template, the photos in the directory have been taken anonymously from Instagram and personal info has been made up for privacy reasons.)
Freelancer Dashboard
Instagram Templates
Main Takeaway
AIM LO (FI) BEFORE JUMPING HI (FI)
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Being in a fast-paced, startup environment made me want to only show the team high fidelity (hifi) designs, but I realized overtime that it was best to run as many lofi designs as possible before hifi versions, to save energy + time.
My Impact
SET THE VISUAL BRAND TONE
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I developed the warm, yet still professional and fresh tone of Almaday, by creating all visual assets of the web application.
PAVED THE WAY FOR UX DESIGN AWARENESS
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As the sole UX/UI designer on the team and main collaborator with the software developer, I acted as the “voice of the user” during the development periods, when testing the app flow in production.
DIRECT FEEDBACK FROM CLIENT
