

Helping small businesses through community-sourced financial support
HELB
HELB represents "helping business".
It is a conceptual app which helps small business owners easily distribute personalized gift cards or gather crowd funds. This concept won the grand prize at Ascend hackathon in 2021.
Role & Duration
Product Manager
Product Designer
Deliverables
User Research
Mid-fidelity wireframes
Hi-fidelity wirframes
Prototypes
Presentation
Platform
Web View on Phone - iOS / Android
The challenge
During the pandemic, small business owners face financial challenges. What do they need? How might we help them?
?
Gap of existing tools on the market
?
How to help the business with minimal impact to the customer
Process
In March of 2021, I decided to join a one-week hackathon to challenge myself. At the beginning, I didn't know how a hackathon worked at all. After I joined the hackathon Slack channel, I noticed I had to form a team of 5-7 people. I asked around in different platforms and pitched my experience. Finally, I recruited 2 UX designers and 2 engineers. The whole project was executed remotely.
Analysis
Define
User Flow
Design System
Design
Coding
Presentation
Analysis
After a quick team introduction, we started the project. I introduced the group to business owners' needs and customers' attitudes. We wanted to find a unique gap instead of mimicking something that already existed in the market. I advocated conducting not only a survey for both business owners and customers, but also a competitive analysis.
Define
We collected and organized data, then started to define the findings. By keeping our research objective (what business owners need that the market doesn't provide) in mind, we searched the data for patterns, themes, and stories. From there, we discovered much key info.
Need finance support
Hard to communicate the usage of the fund
Low Tech
No online present
Shy to ask for customers to support
Crowdfund-ing is too much work
After defining these key pain points from business owners and customers, and looking at the tools in the market, we had a basic idea of what we wanted to build: a tool that could easily build an online profile and gather funds. By providing an easy way to purchase gift cards, business owners could get money first, before the customer spent it. The tool should be native app-based, because most business owners and customers conduct business on mobile devices.
User Flow
We identified 2 flows: how we could help low-tech business owners set up their online websites with QR codes, and also how customers could donate or buy gift cards through an easy scan.
Design System
At this point, we were very confident about what we would build. I started to build a mood board and a basic design system for the team. After many rounds of discussion, we landed on some interesting ideas. I also came up with the name "HELB" and designed the logo.
Design
From wireframe to low fidelity design, to high fidelity design, our team went through many rounds of discussions and iterations. Since we had a very tight schedule, every feature we picked had to serve our original purpose. Thanks to the design system, we could quickly design our screens together.