Providing access to skilled work for anyone, anywhere
SquadStack (formerly SquadRun) is a mobile app that allows stay-at-home mothers & college students to conduct sales by calling on behalf of businesses & earn money from the comfort of their homes. Users can sign up & qualify for high-paying tasks after having qualified across a rigorous assessment module. They earn money for every successful call & redeem the rewards to their personal digital wallet. They perform calls related to use cases like lead qualification, account KYC & document upload, welcome & onboarding calls, and more.
Overview
At SquadStack, we wanted to empower people with the freedom to work whenever and wherever they wanted. I revamped the foundational experience - from onboarding, training, and having users on the platform for them to perform tasks and earn money.
Contributions & Responsibilities:
Formulating product strategy with Product Managers and Leads
Conducting user research & competitive secondary research.
Onboarding new designers to the team.
Setting up foundational principles and design systems.
Facilitating design sprints and converging on solutions.
Creating high-fidelity designs for review and handoff for development.
Creating high-fidelity interactive prototypes and testing with users.
Ensuring tight collaboration with stakeholders in a remote work environment.
Timeline
Jul 2021 - Sep 2022
Tools
Figjam, Figma, Protopie, Useberry
4.1
out of 5 average user rating
46
Net Promoter Score
70k+
Calls made in beta phase
How we approached the problem
As SquadStack was scaling, we needed to design an efficient process, product, service, and system to screen, grow and retain expert talent.
Our system was riddled with siloed hacks working us to the edge. This had a lot of challenges in scaling the expert workforce for the future.
Looking at the current lifecycle and challenges, we identified four themes as a starting point. We identified a set of high-level user jobs for each theme, which evolved further as we conducted research and progressed toward solutions.
Problems we prioritised
As part of the first phase, we identified key pain points related to certain themes like onboarding and tasks. Some of them are:
No other way to sign up except Facebook
Constant switching between different apps for training materials
No easy way to search & filter missions in history
No way to review my responses before submission
Unable to add additional notes throughout the call
Cumbersome navigation in the script experience
How we solved them
We tried to make the experience more seamless
and better for everyone in many ways:
Easy signup using mobile number
Access training material inside the app
Easily filter & search in task history
Review & edit responses before submission
Add notes anytime during the call
Improved navigation and user friendly script experience
and many more…
The old app
The new app
We revisited our foundations and ran a modified design sprint
Stronger foundations
Before going into a rigorous design sprint mode, we took a step back and decided to focus on our foundations that would act as a shared language between all of us and help drive the ideal stakeholder experience. We set a new set of product and design principles and created a new design system.
Product & Design Principles
A set of principles we followed in decision making
SquadStack Design System
A shared language to ensure we deliver the best experiences
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we make it easier to sign up and qualify for jobs for people (aged 18 - 60) who can perform effectively & efficiently from the comfort of their homes and empower them with financial independence
PHASE 1
Research & Discovery
Once we knew what we wanted to solve for, we started with interviewing our users and gathering secondary research data on other platforms on how they tackled similar problems. We also spoke to internal stakeholders and got a clear understanding of the process and problem areas. We ran a modified design sprint where we put down our pain points, findings and created system flows and affinity maps.
PHASE 2
Ideate & Assemble
We ran crazy 8 exercises, derived findings from more research and came up with user flows using JTBD framework and sketched ideas for particular themes
PHASE 3
Review & Designing the solutions
We ran crazy 8 exercises, derived findings from more research and came up with user flows and sketches for particular themes
Post wireframes, we conducted a review session with internal stakeholders and with the changes and feedback we received, we moved onto creating the high fidelity designs for the different user journeys.
Simplifying the sign-up & sign-in process
We removed all previous constraints and implemented sign-up and sign-in using mobile number only. We also saw the opportunity to communicate the value proposition of working with SquadStack in the welcome screens
Designing for onboarding and expectation setting
We wanted to optimise tremendously the process of onboarding and qualifying the user. Only after qualifying, the user becomes an eligible caller on the platform. Previously all this was done manually and in complex processes.
We used an approach of progressive revealing the sequential steps and guiding the user through various steps they needed to perform next.
Helping users gets acquainted with task requirements
Previously all the information that the caller needed to know before starting the call was available on other mediums such as Google docs, PDFs, Webinar recordings etc. There was no singular place for them to access all relevant information and there was a lot of switching back and forth between different apps to access information. In the new app, we brought them all under one umbrella using the hub and spoke methodology and made it easier for users to peruse information
Empowering users to be efficient and skilled workers
We vastly improved the script and navigational experience of the calling screen that helped users to capture data faster and more accurately.
Designing for after completing a call
Designing for financial independence
The ability to earn through the platform is our core offering. We designed the redemption screens for faster checkout and imparting delight to our users.
Reporting for active growth and upskilling
We implemented a new compensation & incentive structure for our users so that they can track their performance and growth on the platform and continue to perform even better.
Verification
PHASE 4
Prototyping & Testing
We built an extensive and highly functional prototype using Protopie which we used to conduct usability testing and gather feedback from our users as well as internal stakeholders. I was particularly happy with the output of the prototype
PHASE 5
Deployment & Usability testing
We shipped the high fidelity designs and design system to the engineering team for development and we also continued to test beta builds of the app with our users. We gathered some good overall feedback and got the indicator that we were headed in the right direction.
“did not expect that I would get to know how much I could earn”
“this app mentions about pay and work so it’s genuine as upfront it tells you what you can earn.”
“Good brands with who you can work. Gives you the energy that you are connected to these brands”
“did not expect that I would get to know how much I could earn”
Key learnings & takeaways
Documentation is super important even for the smallest of projects. This is absolutely critical for a company to scale and grow
Working with a remote team can be challenging especially if everyone on the team is new but it provides creative freedom.
Pushbacks in timeline while unpleasant can be a game changer. It is important for teams to realise this than push for deadlines.
Thank you for reading