Partfolio: A Case Study

Partner and invest in the companies and causes you care about.

Company

Partfolio: A Case Study

The Work

Product Concept

Date

Jan 2016

-

Mar 2016

UX Services

Research, UX/UI, Branding

Project Overview

Partfolio: A Case Study is a crowdsourcing product concept that allows retail investors (regular folks) to invest a "small stake" in the companies and causes they care about, in exchange for ownership equity. Today's crowdsourcing options (like Kickstarter, Indiegogo) offer crowd funding for initial product investment, but do not offer actual equity in an early stage company. Partfolio gives customers the ability to invest very small amounts of capital (1-20k) for actual ownership shares in the seed-stage companies they love. I created the Partfolio product concept to research, test and design a fully baked product offering for a GA (General Assembly) UX Intensive design course. A sample of the UX research process, UX design, final UI and brand screens are below. This case study reflects my thorough Human Centered Design process.

Overall brand screen with respect to messaging, market and brand design. For the amateur investment community: Browse startups and causes you love, Invest in them (for ownership equity) and build your portfolio.

The Problem or Opportunity Defined (A hypothesis based on personal frustration and more limited access and funds).

After conducting 8-10 "potential" customer interview studies (using an interview script with 10-15 investment questions), I discovered that most average investors are willing to invest about 5-10% or their disposable income (above and beyond savings, personal spending, etc.) in early-stage business causes that represent their personal interests. I interviewed co-workers, some friends and family, and people in my personal network) with varying age and incomes, to get an accurate gauge of the investment population. The average age of investment-minded people are around 34-37 years old, in stable career positions; and found that they are willing to risk (invest and WIN or LOSE) between $1-10k of this investment for a percentage of actual ownership in early-stage opportunities for the possibility of small-block ownership in a seed-stage company or cause.

Next, I took my interview feedback and broke it down into the classic affinity diagram to document: what are they thinking, hearing, feeling, saying and doing (about their investment potential)? Some questions in the study where: "What kinds of TV show about investments do you watch?" "How much would you be willing to risk on great ideas or causes?" "what are your current sentiments and limitations about what it takes to be an 'investor' in these causes or companies?". I rolled my data into insights and used it to inform my research insights around the problem/opportunity.

I then created a high-level paper prototype to show to research participants. I had an assumption around how they might navigate an investment app, with an early taxonomy (or IA structure) of where I thought folks might expect to find key functions (screens and features) within this app. Using post-it notes, I asked the participants to sort and order high-level functions within their desired grouping based on customer need, function and usability. I was surprised ( and pleased) to see that MOST of my participants organized their IA needs different from my original ranking and order. I used this information to re-order IA hierarchy and re-thought the design in future layouts for prototyping.

Next, I went back to paper prototyping and took their feedback into account when sketching out the full screen flows. You can see some of them here.

I took those sketches (wireframes) and created a higher-fidelity wire framed set of designs. I built a very basic clickable prototype with most of the full screen-flows and re-conducted customer interviews with the participant group, to prove and inform UX design, feature location, expected actions, desired outcomes and expected user goals.

With informed insight data, IA and insights, I created the next set of fully featured design flows in lower-fidelity. I did circle back with about half (4-6 participants) to confirm usability and desirability of the app screen flows.

Finally, I incorporated the final feedback into final-design screens which showcased brand with typography, messaging insights, color and theming based around my intended market demographic...In final analysis, this was well received by study participants (again 4-6 in the final group) with a desire to invest if this app was fully realized. In the time since this study, some similar investment options have come of the market, but with less focus on practical ease-of-use, desirability and investment options. This is a product concept that I would LOVE to participate in. Their is a need to breakdown traditional access to early-stage investment but their are also legal pitfalls associated with consumer-based investment which can be tricky to navigate.