Elevate Capital is a peer-to-peer platform for investors to build portfolios of properties and privately-owned businesses. An in-house team was tasked with developing the platform based on a working prototype used to secured venture capital investment.

The platform had been built to seek funding, the initial design concentrated mostly on feature set rather than experience. It was very difficult to navigate or to understand what actions to carry out. The team was tasked with revamping the existing platform into a desktop based web application, with the end - user's experience as the focus.

User research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. For me user research is “the process of understanding the impact of design on an audience”.

Coordinated several workshops with stakeholders so we could breakdown the product to its component parts. This helped the team establish business goals and manage expectations as to what could be delivered for the MVP. This also clarified what the product was and/or was not.

Identify and aligning tasks along common paths and establishing journeys. This was done in a workshop that consisted of users and the business. Each group ranks tasks with a value. This helps trim the scope to suit MVP.

User Testing
We had access to some early adopters and investors who we had use the site in the Elevate office as well as remotely over skype. We handed them some tasks and recorded their interaction on screen.

Competitor Analysis
The industry was very young when we were started the project especially in the UK but we still had access to a handful of competitors to see what was already in the market place but also watch out for gaps we could improve on.

After the discovery a few patterns began to emerge -

• User found navigation was confusing.
• Users found information on the page seemed complicated and sometimes contradicting.
• They found no distinction between a ‘call to action’ and input field.
• Users did not know how to carry out or complete a transaction.
• The platform did not meet the minimum login security for a financial platform.

This led us (myself - lead UX, and head of development - Julius Pabrinkis) to revise the initial brief with the business founder Paul Toon. We recommended an MVP rather than the full application. this would achieve 2 main benefits -

1. Go to market with in 6 months (the initial requirement was not achievable with that time frame).
2. Validate what the user needs vs what the business thinks the user needs.

With common scenario’s in place, we were able to define detailed personas, using their vast data pool. The personas looked something like this:

Rapid prototyping allowed us to present complex financial ideas to users and instantly get instant feedback, which in turn enabled quick iteration without tying down valuable development resource.

After multiple reiteration and testing with user we achieved

• We helped the business clarity it's offering to the user.
• Simplified the layout and content of the platform aid user expectation.
• Improved booking process to guide user along.
• MVP went into development on time.