Background
Client: Co-opHive
Role: Principal UI/UX Designer
Responsibilities:
User flow
Wireframes
User Interface Design
User Experience Design
UX Writing
The Problem
Today, in an era when many people feel powerless to change their lives, cooperatives represent a strong, vibrant, and viable economic alternative. Cooperatives are formed to meet peoples’ mutual needs. They are based on the powerful idea that together, a group of people can achieve goals that none of them could achieve alone. As governments around the world cut services and withdraw from regulating markets, cooperatives are being considered useful mechanisms to manage risk for members in Agricultural or other similar cooperatives, help salary/wage earners save for the future through a soft-felt monthly contribution that is deducted from source, own what might be difficult for individuals to own by their efforts, strengthen the communities in which they operate through job provision and payment of local taxes. Cooperatives generally provide an economic boost to the community as well.
Despite the impact of cooperatives on the economy, cooperatives in Nigeria still face problems such as lack of digitized management systems. They have to keep records starched in books year in year out. If the person in charge of records experiences any theft issue, what it means is that the whole records of the organization are missing. Another thing cooperatives in Nigeria don’t leverage is collaboration with other cooperatives of the same interest to achieve a common goal. By collaborating, they can increase their investment capacity and make more profit.
Research Findings
Client has worked with several cooperative societies and has gathered enough data to make the right decision about solving the problem. One of the outcomes of the research is that cooperatives desire to go digital, but they are not ready to build a website that they have to personally manage over the years or employ someone to manage. So they are looking for an already existing platform they can easily use for a fee without having to bother about technicalities.
Also, most cooperative societies are not managed by people who are skilled in ICT, therefore the solution they are looking forward to use must be simple to learn just like the way they easily learned to use their smartphones.
The Task
After considering the problem at hand and the research findings, different solutions where ideated, but the one being implemented in this design is that which is a platform with the ability to manage the data of different cooperative societies for a fee (Monthly/Yearly) and use the data collected to match cooperatives of the same interest together so they can collaborate and achieve goals together.
All a cooperative need to do is to download a spreadsheet format which they would follow to input their data and then upload it on the platform the same way an average person could upload picture on Facebook.
The Target Audience
Presidents and secretaries of cooperative societies with a desire to digitize their organisational management process.
Target Audience
Presidents and secretaries of cooperative societies with a desire to digitize their organisational management process.
Final UI
The below are parts of the screens that make up the product.
Challenges
Designing with this kind of audience was a bit challenging. I had to let go of my design preferences and focus totally on the user. I had care less about aesthetics and focused more on functionality.
Conclusion
Even though this project was a bit challenging, I learned a lot in the process especially during developer hand-off. I was able to build empathy in a better way. Also, I learned to collaborate effectively.