SOMO Africa
Designing to increase engagement and attract investors to an international non-profit
Role
Lead UX Designer
Timeline
05/2022 - 07/2022
Platform
Responsive Desktop + Mobile
Somo Africa is a non-profit organization headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya whose mission is to provide a platform and funding to small business owners and entrepreneurs. Their theme of empowerment is one with enormous potential, but their digital presence was lacking and therefore keeping them from growing and expanding their reach.
Across 10 weeks, I collaborated with Somo Africa and a team of 5 UX experts to research, plan, and redesign 4 pages crucial to Somo Africa's business goal.
UX Team:
Rachel Millman, Lead UX Designer
Miyya Cody, Lead UX Researcher
Casi Fleischmann, UX Designer
Ashley Cao, UX Researcher
Juen Koech, UX Researcher
plan
ANALYZE, RESEARCH, + PREPARE
Business Goals
We began by learning about the organization and their mission, their current user base, and what they aim to accomplish within the timeline of our project.
Through multiple intake calls with the Somo Africa team, including their CEO and product managers, we learned that the main goal of this project was to better attract investors. Investors are the primary source of funding for the entrepreneurs that Somo Africa supports, and this funding is not
With a better idea of the overall objective, we could strategize as a team to tackle this project and achieve the overarching goal.
Project Plan
The first decision we made as a UX team was to divide this project into four phases: research, design, build, and validate. With a team made up of both researchers and designers, these phases meant we could best and most efficiently utilize the expertise on our team.
For each phase, we set milestones and detailed exactly what and who that milestone would involve in order to accomplish it. We also set clear communication expectations for the team, to ensure we all stayed on the same page and met deadlines.
Click the image below to see how we mapped out each phase of our project plan -
research
DIGGING INTO THE PROBLEM SPACE
Walkthroughs + User Interviews
We came into this project with an existing website, brand, and user base that we needed to work with as our jumping-off point. So, what better way to help us learn about the site and about how users utilize it, than to have users show it to us themselves?
We recruited X users to participate in casual product walkthrough calls with us. These walkthroughs consisted of a few simple questions and tasks such as "Tell me about the last time you visited Somo's website" and "Find a business that you'd like to support and make a contribution". As simple as these prompts were, they gave us valuable insights into user roles, behaviors, and feelings relating to the existing experience.
We gathered X primary insights that captured the average sentiments of users:
Secondary Research
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Research Synthesis
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Personas
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design
CRAFTING A NEW AND IMPROVED SOMO EXPERIENCE
Problem Statement
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User Flows + Information Architecture
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Initial Designs
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build
CREATING A MODEL OF THE FUTURE WEBSITE
Content Writing
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Style Guide
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Interactive Prototype
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validate
ENSURING OUR DESIGNS FULFILL STAKEHOLDER GOALS
Usability Testing
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Design Iteration
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Client Handoff Documention
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