Crowdspring

I led the research team for this project. We started by conducting extensive research on our users, both clients and creatives, to understand their needs and pain points. We used qualitative surveys and user interviews. We also conducted extensive competitor research by posting projects on their platforms.

Based on the research, we developed several personas based on our users and charted each of their journeys through the product.

Taken holistically, the research led us to focus the product redesign on three “tent-poles”:

- “Top of the funnel” growth
- Quality and choice for clients
- More opportunities and increased income for creatives

All UX decisions we would make over the course of the redesign would ladder up to one of these tent-poles. I worked with the CEO to craft a business requirements document that aligned with the tent-poles and would provide a basis for UA testing.

In order to move quickly, we decided to focus first on an MVP experience, with UX and development occurring in parallel. All future iterations would add features to the MVP until we had a finished product.

The success of the redesign hinged in-part on our ability to restructure the info architecture of the site to improve the database structure, thus the site’s overall performance. If we could reduce the number of queries to the database, we would drastically improve site speed.

We ended up with a structure that has just three main objects for the data model: projects, users, and views, significantly reducing the necessary queries. Additionally, we found many opportunities to streamline the views, resulting in a much better user experience.

Wireframing was done section by section, focusing on the core product workflow first. All wireframes began as whiteboard sessions. Whiteboards were translated into initial digital wireframes. All wireframes were documented for developers, and many parts of the site were componentized to show their various states. The wireframes were assembled into InVision prototypes to allow for internal acceptance testing and light testing with a small focus group of our users. The end result was hundreds of screens of wireframes and dozens of prototypes.

The goals for the visual design for this project were to get the interface out of the way for clients and to help crowdspring feel like another design tool for our creative community, modeled after other design tools designers would be familiar with like InVision.

We also sought to highlight the biggest asset we have, our amazing community of designers. To do so, we included as much of their work as possible into the designs, seeking their permission of course!

The redesigned crowdspring site launched in mid-September 2017. We spent the first three months post-launch learning as much as we could about the UX performance of the site, as well as measuring against our business KPIs and developing plans for iterations.

Early data showed a 12% increase in conversion, an average sale price increase, and an increase in the number of active projects. We also saw an increase in projects from repeat customers, though it’s unclear if this was organic or due to a targeted marketing effort.