2. 3
Marce Milla
San Salvador, ES
Chelsea Lyle
Kentucky, USA
Eddie Zhang
Zhejiang, China
Carol Massá
Rio de Janeiro, BR
Arturo Díaz
Aguascalientes, MX
INTRODUCTION
From 5 different countries around the world, (USA,
Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico and China) our team of
Design Managers as well as Industrial and Service
Designers worked for a total of 10 weeks to deliver
a social network that would serve an existing need
for the design community. The challenge of this
project was to foresee a current need and to create
a social network that would be meaningful 25 years
from now.
3. 8
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10
IN 25-50 YEARS, WHAT WILL FREELANCING LOOK LIKE?
Globalization No time zone
Payment vs. exposure
International
currency
Credibility, Reliability, & Security Complete device syncing
and physical connection
2015
14 million full-time
online freelancers
in America
2015
14 million full-time
online freelancers
in America
2015
"Work is no longer
a place"
- oDesk' CEO Gary Swart
2015
"Work is no longer
a place"
- oDesk' CEO Gary Swart
One in three workers
will be freelancing
online worldwide.
2025
One in three workers
will be freelancing
online worldwide.
2025
SECONDARY RESEARCH:
FUTURE REFERENCESGETTING
STARTED
THE FUTURE FOR FREELANCE
Once we had a clear view on our
opportunity space, we studied
trends and possible scenarios for
freelancing 25 years from now.
We came across insightful data
points and statistics that proved
how much working out of an office
space would grow in a globalized
world, where time zones will
be almost inexistent and relying
on digital experiences is part of
everyday life.
4. 10
Founded: 2010
Location: Savannah, Georgia, U.S.
Interaction: Physical
Short description of services:
ThincSavannah is the city's first coworking place. To bring together
work collaboration. They provide a partnership with accounting,
banking, insurance and legal support.
Age: 35
Origin: Savannah, Georgia, US
Education Level: M.A. Business
Occupation/Focus: Entrepreneur
(introverted to extroverted)
(low to high income)
(low to high skills)
(walking to driving)
(lazy to productive)
DAVES JACKSON
GETTING
STARTED
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS:
THINC SAVANNAH
STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
OPPORTUNITIES THREATS
· Pioneer co-working space in Savannah
· Enhance local business community
· Proximity with the client due to location
· Amenities such as fiber optic internet,
kitchen, conference rooms, printers,
discount parking, lockers
· Membership plans
· Affinity Partners (legal, insurance,
account and banking)
· Lack of consistancy in social media
· Focus in local business limitation
· Privacy?
· 45 members with random information
· Not clear if there is a criteria to use it
· Not clear if the space is multidisciplinary
use such as liberal arts field or cinema.
· Enhance the network communication
· Elevate the co-work experience
· Promote freelancers and small business work
· Overnight rating plans
· News up-to-date
· Develop national approach for expansion
· No flexibility when it comes to work with
multidisciplinary team compromising
future affiliations/business
· Copyright issues
· Language issues is it informal or formal?
· Insurance effectiveness for loss of power,
computer damage, lost of data, fire?
· Dependable availabitiliy
5. 15
HARDNavigation
EASYNavigation
PHYSICAL Interaction
DIGITAL Interaction
GETTING
STARTED
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS:
OPPORTUNITY SPACE
OPPORTUNITY SPACE
After learning about social networks
and identifying competitors related
to the freelance culture, we plotted
these competitors into a 2x2 model.
The criteria selected were navigation
and interaction, and this model
gave us a clear vision of where the
opportunity space was.
We realized that there is an
opportunity to close the gap between
physical an digital interaction that lie
within the currently existing global
social networks.
Our 2x2 had to be reframed when
we finished our primary research
because we found out that one of
the competitors was not listed.
On the right you can visualize the
first 2x2.
LinkedIn
Thinc
Catchafire
Behance
ODesk
8. 32
Affinitizing:
Buckets
RESPONSIBILITY
COLLABORATE FREEDOM FAME PASSION
GROWTH trust stability
DIGGING
DEEPER
- Planning is essential to our successful
freelancing lifestyle.
- We want to be perceived as hard
working, independent professionals.
- We lack the resources that give us
access to freelance opportunities.
- We seek the opportunity to broaden
our skillsets.
- We can work anywhere that enables
us to be ourselves.
- We don’t mind taking risks and
compromising.
- We value different methods of
exposing our work or services.
- We are passionate about what we do.
- Freelance will grow with us as long as
we are committed.
- We want to establish meaningful
connections that are mutually beneficial.
- We gain trust by being responsible.
- Having a stable income is important to us.
9. 35
overarching question:
HOW MIGHT WE...?DIGGING
DEEPER
OUR FOCUSED RESEARCH QUESTION
After being completely immersed in what the
users insights were and how the freelancing
community works, thinks and feels, we
pinned down our overarching research
question.
This became our most valuable go-to
statement to make sure that everything that
we developed in our ideation and prototyping
would be meaningful for the freelance
community studied during this project.
This “how might we” question was then
answered through the lenses of our insight
delivered after affinitizing our data. View our
key concept driver on the next page.
11. 41
idea
develop-
ment
user definition:
EMPATHY MAPS
THE BEGINNER: Fresh minded and enthusiastic about starting a new journey, the begin-
ner is a newbie to the professional world. He is highly influenced by the expectations of
society, friends and family and has many doubts and fears. Despite the outstanding skill
sets he might have, he is apprehensive about his future and making decisions. He is
looking for a starting point, guidance and most importantly, experience and he is willing
to take risks and compromise since he is not fully committed to anything yet.
12. 47
DEVELOPING FEATURES
To understand and build
tangible features we developed
a framework to explore the
following key areas:
- What does it do?
- Why do we need this?
- What do we need?
- Who do we contact?
idea
develop-
ment
Solidify:
final features
?
What do we need?
? What do we need?What does it do?
JournalCalendar
Why do we need this Who do we contact?
Tohelp users plan
their projects.
-Calendar schedule
-Notepad
-Task reminder
-Sync with others
-Users calendars
-Self-service
-Flow help support
What does it do?
TravelAIDkit
Why do we need this? What do we need? Who do we contact?
Toprovide
recommendations,
tips, coupons or
other helpful travel
tools.
-Editor
-Partners
-Editor
-Travel agencies &
Magazines
-Chamber of
commerce
-Yelp
-Travel agencies
-Business
What does it do?
ProjectShare
Why do we need this? What do we need? Who do we contact?
Toconnect users
with each other,
and recruiters
giving the
opportunity for
exposure and
recognition.
-Ranking system
-Categories
-Quality of work
-Collaboration
-Software
development
-Membership revenue
-HR Departments
-Flow programmers
-Executive account
13. 51
FLOW COLORS
AND TYPOGRAPHY
After we figured out Flow’s logo it
was time to decide Flow colors and
typography.
The blue with highlights of green
represents water continuous cycle,
as one of the most important
elements of life we used this
color to imply the human nature
side of our network. We added
a secondary palette with yellow
inducing energy and vibrancy. The
neutral color is used to balance this
blue/yellow contrast .
Our criteria to choose Flow’s
typography was based on finding
a young and digital user-friendly
type to emphasize our main target
audience.
branding process:
COLORS AND TYPOGRAPHYbranding
14. 52
DESIRED FLOW IDENTITY
To solidify our brand identity
we build up a desired identity
framework where we were able
to develop statements for different
brand scenarios.
We started of with the Brand
Vision which was based in our
value proposition, then moved to
Values/Beliefs, Mission on Earth
(what is our network contribution to
the world), Flow Personality Trait,
Benefits, Audience, Offering and
Heritage.
The content was merged between
the business canvas information
and also the creative brief proposal.
branding process:
DESIRED IDENTITYbranding
15. 53
FLOW HUB POSTER
Our social network provides
personal professional meetings by
providing the Flow Hub experience.
The Flow Hub is part of the Travel/
Map Hotspot Feature where we
promote social pop up events and
bring together creatives all over the
world.
It could be as close as down the
street to the other side of the world.
On the right is a Flow Hub Poster
prototype that took place in Foxy
Loxy - Savannah, Ga.
branding process:
POSTERbranding
16. 55
proto-
typing
platform:
SITEMAP
PROTOTYPING TOOLS
To bring Flow app platform to life
we had to start of by making the
user sitemap, were we used our
final features as the main menu
considering a very straight forward
navigation.
Other tools were used such as
flowchart, to make sure that the
user would be able to access and
intuitively explore the app.
Also a service encounters map
illustrated a user journey to facilitate
the prototyping afterwards.
We used the POP platform and
tested among 15 people.
By the end we were able to
describe a heuristic evaluation
enabling us to discover the pain
points of the Flow app usability.
20. 68
Chelsea Lyle
Carol Massá
Arturo Díaz
Eddie Zhang
Marce Milla
Prof. Bruce Claxton
DMGT 720 | Spring 2015
Chelsea Lyle
Carol Massá
Arturo Díaz
Eddie Zhang
Marce Milla
Prof. Bruce Claxton
DMGT 720 | Spring 2015
