Overview

Smartplace (Previous name: 9Cloud) is a SAAS startup in Sydney specialising in process automation. The aim of the product is to break organisational silo operations in middle sized companies.

I have joined in September 2019, just two months before the product made its official launch. Since I was the only designer in the team, and was the first job I had as a designer, this experience was extremely rewarding: seeing my own designs coming to life and have it bring value to something.

Towards the the end of 2020, the product needed re-evaluation. I joined the product and design team. I played a role in research and competitor analysis, wrote product requirements, and eventually redesigned the software UI screens.

Role

- UI UX designer

Deliverables

- High fidelity web app screen designs
- Wireframes

Tools

- Figma

Results

Contributed to winning best startup for user experience in Startcon 2019

Click here to jump to final product

Empathise

Imagine being a new designer in a software company and one day, you require assistance from the marketing department. However, you have no clue who to reach for. You don't know anyone from the marketing team, and even worse, when you reach for assistance, colleagues from the marketing department refuse to share information with you. This is called organizational silo, a problem most medium to large-sized companies face.

Organizational silos is a term describing fragmented processes in between departments in companies. This can cause problems because it causes conflict, detrimental to relationships between co-workers, ultimately leading to unfulfilled company goals.

organizational silo:

ideal operation (what smartplace aims to do):

The challenge was to be a platform that solve this problem, providing a no/low-code, single platform that consolidates all operations of the organisation.

Competitor analysis

To understand what we're up against, we have conducted a competitor analysis with other low-code products in the market.

We have focused on the features these software provide, and how they benefit their target audience.

our team confluence document on competitor analysis -

Define

Now with the problem known and with competitor analysis in hand, the team have conducted a product discovery.

We have done throughout research online and listed out the possible struggles employee and employers face in silo operation organisations. We brainstormed over how might we solve this problem on our platform, creating a wishlist of features we would like Smartplace to have.

Discovery one:
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‍When employees leave the company, knowledge of processes and practices also walk out the door. Thus, when a new person takes over, they have left no records of those practices.

HMW help?:
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‍Provide a centralized knowledge base, where employees can contribute processes, knowledge, and tips.

Discovery two:
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In larger companies when employees require assistance from other departments, employees don't know who to find or where to submit approval and requests.

HMW help?:
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‍Employees can submit requests using forms, then get transferred to the appropriate department for response. Employees can also follow up and track progress.

Discovery three:
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Admins (HR, head of department etc.) in our existing client tracked employee records using excel and paper spreadsheets. This is highly inefficient as data is difficult to manage to be synced across multiple members of the team.
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HMW help?:
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Electronic spreadsheets can be used, where admins store information in one platform, where it can be synced and accessed across all admins in the team.

Delivery

Dashboard

Resources - Resources are a centralized knowledge base for each organization. This is so knowledge can be shared amongst departments and co-workers.
Approvals are usually a long and slow process in larger organizations, where it gets transferred across different people. Employees can now track their approvals on their dashboard.
Important to-dos and overdue tasks are highlighted, encouraging action to be taken.

Forms

In larger companies when employees require assistance from other departments, they often don't know who to find or where to submit approval and requests. amongst departments and co-workers.
Employees can now simply click on the 'help' page of Smartplace, filling in their enquiry that reaches the right department of the company.