my role
UI/UX Design
Research
Wireframing
Prototyping
Usability testing
Information Architecture
Interaction Design
client
Care Australia
studio
Portable
year
2022
CARE Australia was looking at ways to diversify their revenue stream, their initial model relied on institutional funding which was proving to be unsustanable.
CARE Australia was interested in adopting a product built by their UK counterpart. The product in question is lendwithcare, it is a platform built for micro-financing, with the idea that people interested in donating could sign up and help finance various micro-loans for entrepreneurs in several countries around the world.
Our goal was to deliver an interactive high fidelity proof of concept to CARE Australia, we would not only rebuild, but we would test and refine the existing product. This was not a white labelling project but a brand new strategic approach for the product, furthermore CARE Australia's version would be aimed at a very specific demographic, in this instance looking at female entrepreneurs in Vietnam.
It might come as no surprise that micro-financing is equal parts confusing and complicated, we would need to learn a lot before aiming to build the product. Our approach was two-fold, firstly we would be granted access to the existing UK platform and conduct thorough of the system, secondly we would go directly to the source, this included a series of meetings, walkthroughs Q+As with the original development team. Luckily this process was collaborative working closely with a fantastic Strategist Willhemina Wahlin and Developer turned Business Analyst Greg Corlett.
In addition to auditing the UK platform a series of stakeholder interviews were conducted, with an aim to sort and prioritise features into a preliminary roadmap and identify what the MVP would look like. For here we constructed the IA and began creating an MVP as a low fidelity prototype, one that we would be able to walk stakeholder through and conduct usability testing.
A new brand identity wasn't prioritised for this project and therefore wasn't in scope. However we sent questions to the client to help guide our approach, we had noticed that CARE Australia had a number of sub brands, some of these particular brands were built in a complimentary fashions where they would adopt their own primary colour and visual styling while balancing it with elements from the CARE Australia brand. As part of our prototype presentation we put together a simple visual aesthetic that used the same approach.
After approval of the prototype we applied a visual uplift to the components with the brief brand direction. The high fidelity MVP would remain as mobile prototype with colourful gradients, warm photography and rounded corners used to provide kindhearted personality to the designs. We built flexible design systems to cater towards a number of smaller UI elements such as the progress bars, entrepreneur cards and various check out states.
