Case Study: Founded
Here is my account of my UX endeavour with our wonderful clients from Founded, a platform connecting small businesses to lawyers who work online with upfront, fixed fees.
Breakdown of roles:
Research & Planning: Patrick Weberman
Research & Testing. Nadia Hogg
Design: Natalie Black
The Challenge
Our mission was to build an easy to use tool that would determine if incorporation was right for a small business. It would have to calculate estimated tax savings, determine risk of liability and increase the awareness of Founded while generating marketing leads by collecting email addresses. We set out to answer the age old question all business owners ask: ‘should I incorporate?.
Once the user had completed the assessment tool, a personalized report would then be emailed to them providing a recommendation of Yes or No and a liability score out of 100, along with helpful tips on what to do next.
We had a few reservations about a tool like this; Who would actually use it and how would they find it? And, if you are already a small business owner, wouldn’t you already know when to consider incorporation? None of us knew enough about the process to assume anything, it was time to do some research.
Research and Planning
Our domain research kicked off and led into a competitive comparative analysis. We found lots of sites that were doing similar things as Founded. This sudden trend of online legal marketplaces popping up was incredibly interesting; users seeking legal documents and advice could avoid law offices and personal interactions with lawyers altogether.
Users would just create an account, access the documents they need and never have to pay legal fees beyond their agreed membership. Plus, they would also have an accredited lawyer on retainer to field any questions they may have. These sites were extremely popular in the United States and just gaining traction here in Canada.
We also learned about a certain class of elite users who bypass lawyers and legal marketplaces altogether; we ended up nicknaming them ‘The Madlibs’. Shopify, Stripe Atlas and Bay Street In a Box all provide document templates that help a client automate thier business.
We developed two sets of surveys to be delivered. One for businesses that were incorporated and one for sole proprietorships. We wanted to know: who were these small business owners who were interested in incorporating and what steps did they take when starting a business?
Our 25 user surveys and 9 interviews came back with some interesting data. Partnerships were familiar with the steps and benefits of incorporation, they simply never took the plunge. Why was this? Perhaps we had found our ideal user for our application.
Planning
With the data we collected, we could now build two user personas.
Depending on your field of expertise, incorporation was a word that was not generally thrown around. Some partnerships just always associated the term with big business and agencies with dozens of employees, and it was here we discovered our disconnect.
The website that this tool would live on is called shouldioncorporate.ca. It was genius domain name to register. During our user interviews, our personas googled the search term, ‘Should I incorporate?’. Founded would surely capture a lot of traffic by anyone typing in those words and having them discover the widget instantly.
Design & Testing
The team came up with some fantastic low fidelity wireframes that we quickly started circulating around for some first impression testing. As always, we designed mobile first, then expanded our final design into a desktop version.
The feedback we got back was fantastic and helped us with future iterations. The biggest problems that needed addressing were:
- Our terminology was confusing (Digital marketers to the rescue!)
- The amount of screens that a user had to scroll through was overwhelming
- There was no introduction or explainer to the application. Users needed a bit of handholding to understand exactly what they were doing
Another test we performed was an ‘Oz test’. It was simply printing out the screens of the assessment tool and placing them in front of a user and asking them to describe their thinking out loud. We also wanted to see if they could navigate through the application by shuffling through the print outs.
The feedback again was the same as our first impression testing. It needed information icons to help users with questions they did not understand. Michelle’s big pain point was terminology when tackling these tools online; we did not want someone to abandon the process.
We put special consideration into our voice and tone with the goal of gaining trust, which helped our users feel comfortable enough to submit their email at the end to obtain their report.
While designing and brainstorming the lead generation process, we got mixed opinions about where the email collection screen should be placed. If we asked for that information before the assessment, we could be certain of capturing the user’s information. But we knew by user behaviour that they may not have felt comfortable sharing that information with Founded, a website they may not have heard of before. Alternatively, we were taking a risk by putting it at the back of the program; we had to have faith that users wouldn’t abandon the process before completing the assessment.
Our second version featured a brief description about incoporation and some statistics that small business owners could relate to. It also mapped out the 3 steps you would take throughout our assessment tool. We also toyed around with having a brief primer video that could help walk users through the process even further. But the overall design we were trying to achieve didn’t allow for a video, it felt like we were trying to fill space and overload the user with bells and whistles. Plus, it was a tall order to assume a person on their mobile phone would spend their precious data on a video.
While using a different website, Incorporation Ontario, another pain point Michelle encountered while trying to incoporate online was stalling halfway through the process. Because she didn’t have the necessary information readily available to answer some of the questions, she ended up having to revisit the questionnaire at a later date. Keeping this in mind, we felt confident enough to design our mid-fidelity wireframes. We had our intro, our primer, and a checklist of things you needed to know before using the assessment tool.
Our team was ready to create hi-fidelity wireframes with our slick UI layer, but first we needed to get our current design approved by our clients at Founded.
They did not like our direction at all.
They felt strongly that we had it backwards. They wanted the Tax Savings calculator and questions up front, and the email collection at the back of the program. Our clients had a vision of users playing with the sliders, and toying with different results. We explained our reasoning but their idea of creating a lead generation was not their first priority anymore, so the calculator widget was bumped up to the top spot.
We went back to the drawing board and came up with a design we all agreed was the best solution.
The Final Product
Below are the screens from the desktop version of the Should I Incorporate? assessment tool. It really came together well, working with the web developers at RED Academy throughout the last half of the project was a great experience. They let us know what was actually doable in terms of interactivity and how the widget could produce an email based on what the user’s answers were.
We presented the final product to Founded which also included a group of our peers and instructors. They were extemely happy, they gave us the best compliment of all; ‘When can we get this developed?’ and ‘How long will it take?’
Should I Incorporate? is one one of the most enjoyable UX projects I have ever had the pleasure to work on, the team had such a good dynamic and we complemented each other’s abilities and never once got discouraged. Going through different iterations with the client meant they were invested in the project and trusted us with executing those decisions. I am confident to say the tool will be a great resource and I hope to work with the folks at Founded again one day.
