Freelancer's Dashboard

The platform drives quality and growth by revolutionizing user experience and leaving outdated versions behind.

Role

I conducted and analyzed all user research and designed and delivered final solutions.

Timeline

Jun - Nov 2022

Team

6 engineers, a Product manager and a Stakeholder

Impact

9k+ users per month Usability satisfaction score 87 (Excellent)

Deliverables

Design

User Persona

CJM

Description

The network software testing company aims to reimagine the freelancer’s experience and move away from old platforms to provide a better experience for Freelancers and, as a result, a better quality of testing for clients. The Dashboard redesign is part of the major experience redesign I will refer to in this article.

TL;DR: Dribbble summary

Research

For the Freelancer experience redesign, I have conducted an extensive Journey map study. You can read more about it here. I addressed freelancers' paint points and needs discovered during this study in the new design proposal.

Freelancer Journey Map: The Dashboard notes are highlighted separately on top of the map. Read about study

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Problem definition

For the Freelancer experience redesign, I have conducted an extensive Journey map study. You can read more about it here.

The current freelancer Home page needs to respond to paramount user needs - Work and Income. Over the last 8 years, it has acquired various functionality but not answer the basic questions from the user:

"How do I get work?"
"Do I have any active tasks? Do I have anything planned?"
"What's my income?"

Old Dashboard Design. Quotes are taken from user interviews.

Takeaways

The main goal of Freelancers in the product is to get a job, complete it and get paid. The Dashboard need to help users to accomplish it.

The Dashboard is not a separate step of the experience. It is a "home" page and indicates user action and status. Regardless of the user's flow, the Dashboard reflects and answers the question:

"At what stage am I at?"
"What can I do next to meet my need?"

If there is nothing for me as a user, you can lose my interest and engagement.

Workshop

The redesign of the freelancer's workflow was a challenging task due to the involvement of multiple interested groups whose work and processes would be impacted. This was one of the main issues addressed in the stakeholders input.
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It goes beyond what the interface looks towards how the process should be and how we should tackle one or another challenge to optimise the company processes overall.

The stakeholder groups were:

Testing Managers
Freelancer's success specialist
Company executives

Interest groups often have differing opinions on how things should be done. Trying to find common ground during a discussion can be a lengthy process and may not necessarily lead to actionable outcomes.

To move the processes constructively, I facilitated multiple workshops where various groups were involved, put in a position of working together and not confrontation.

My learning is the missing opportunity to include freelancers in the workshops to let users stand for their experience at the earlier stages. I think it can bring clarity for the stakeholders of the people they are targeting and help a designer stand for the user interest.

Principals

Challenge the "all or nothing" freelancer nature: one of the Freelancer's most significant pain points is to keep the sinusoidal type of work due to the uncertainty of upcoming income. We should allow freelancers to self-schedule tasks and showcase their skills more independently.
No unjustifiable unknowns: information is critical to getting the necessary knowledge to complete the task successfully. Considering the company's client specifics and different GDPRs, Freelancers need to get enough information about products under testing, testing activity, and testing results.
Feedback is more than just a few words: feedback engages users to continue working and improving. We need to amplifying the human nature of reward and fulfilment. A solid feedback system will increase the quality of the Freelancers and, as a result, the quality of the company's service.

Three illustrations of design principles

Concept

I began to map the flow and values for each design view based on accumulated knowledge

Blocks of screens with the questions that users can find answers to

Recognizing the high demand for mobile responsiveness needing more user experience, I created a navigation tree map and developed ideas for mobile interactions.

First concept validation

I had two main concepts in mind - Calendar and Schedule. Knowing that Freelancer often struggles with time management and multi-tasking, I did the first moderated testing with three Freelancers.

Calendar concept

I decided to drop Calendar's approach after interviewing and reviewing prototypes for the following reasons:

Recognizing the high demand for mobile responsiveness needing more user experience, I created a navigation tree map and developed ideas for mobile interactions.

The increased complexity in interaction in covering different use-cases (task has no defined time slots and mainly operating by the due, Freelancers often start and stop testing multiple times within the "open task window.")
Expecting Freelancers to fill the dedicated time slot for a task to some extent goes against Freelancer nature as we don't expect them to be precise in the time they allocate for a task as long as it meets the testing window.

Provide a sense of time to the Freelancers
Surface up the working availability hours (Working preferences)

Takeaways from the calendar concept that I took to the future proposals

User testing

For the next round, we did unmoderated testing with the cart sorting exercise on the Schedule concept. I paired with usability researcher Jillian Heller for this study.

Schedule concept mobile

Schedule concept desktop

Problem statement

The current Dashboard has a lot of noise and non-essential information. It is an issue since it is the first place a freelancer sees once on the platform and their most frequented screen. (9k+ users per month)

Hypothesis

By making the Dashboard a leaner screen and only presenting the essential information and action items for the Freelancer after log-in in, testers will have a more valuable and efficient experience throughout their time on the platform.

Goal

To validate if the redesigned Freelancer Dashboard is successful as Testers' new main entry point.

Findings

Usability Catastrophe: 0 findings (yay!)
Major usability issues: 16 findings
Minor usability issues: 15 findings
Cosmetic problem: 1 finding

Design

Learning from the usability findings, I prepared the final Work (Dashboard) proposal.

I presented the design to the engineering team to gather technical questions and feedback. Team and engineering input is always to the point and essential for successful delivery.

Responsive design

Delivery

I paired with the usability researcher Helen Hendrikson for moderated testing. The goal was to validate the prototypes to ensure we deliver the maximum value to freelancers.

The Sample: a total of 10 users (5 new and 5 old users)

System Usability Scale

The study helped to capture the missing data from the invitation and task design, such as a Run start day. It showed the difference in perception of the Testing run status vs Task statuses. It challenged the relevance of some data points on the right-side panel sections. Helped to identify the missing data from the task table and detect potential overload of user attention in the onboarding steps.

After revising the design and reviewing by engineering team I prepared design for engineering handoff of the first iteration. The first iteration (first product release) is the version of the design with scoped data and functionality.

The prototype for the first production release you can find bellow: