Sistahbiz Global Network membership platform design & strategy
Sistahbiz is a nonprofit business accelerator for Black women entrepreneurs. We collaborated with them to envision a game-changing membership platform that would support the unique needs of their community.
Project type User-centered design (UCD), envisioning & strategy.
Key tasks Foundational research, competitive audit, concept ideation based on research insights, UX & visual design, prototyping, evaluative research, concept validation & prioritization, pitch deck, product roadmap.
Context
Timeline 7 weeks
My role Director, designer, scoping and managing interns.
During the first few months of the Covid lockdown, projects slowed down at Blink and I found myself on the bench for a couple weeks. We had several interns scheduled to start in June but didn’t yet have projects for all of them to work on. I pitched the idea of doing a pro-bono project over the summer with our interns as the primary practitioners, and the Blink leadership team was fully on board. I used my bench time to talk to potential candidates, determine selection criteria, present the top candidates to the leadership team, and then to scope the project once we had selected Sistahbiz. Core team: myself, a design intern and a research intern. Additional contributors: part-time junior visual designer, PM, research director.
The Challenge
Designing a unique, useful and scalable membership platform.
Sistahbiz came to Blink with the vision of building an online platform to better support its members and create a sustainable revenue stream. Our challenge was to design a unique membership experience informed by research and to create assets that the Sistahbiz team could use to secure funding.
the Process
Understanding the unique challenges of Black women entrepreneurs to design experiences around their needs.
Over the course of our seven-week engagement, we led the Sistahbiz team through a user-centered design process combining multiple rounds of research with an iterative design approach to create a product vision built on user needs. We armed Sistahbiz with an envisioning prototype and presentation to secure funding, as well as a product roadmap and development plan to guide the team’s next steps.
We began with user interviews and an analysis of the competitive landscape. The entrepreneurs we spoke with represented a range of business types, sizes, and years in business. From these interviews, we surfaced 11 themes that represented their needs and challenges.
We then invited practitioners from across Blink to participate in an ideation session based on our research findings. Together, we created more than 50 innovative concepts, leveraging the expertise and fresh perspective of the broader Blink community.
To determine which of these concepts to move forward with, we facilitated a workshop with the Sistahbiz team and conducted another round of research. Through close collaboration between design and research, we were able to weave our findings into each part of the membership platform experience.
the Result
A product vision for a truly unique membership experience.
The final product vision is built on three core value propositions and three signature experiences. The value propositions are grounded in research and all the core features ladder up to one of them.
Signature experiences are unique and delightful elements in the product that solve for key user needs. The Sistahbiz signature experiences are an essential strategy for differentiation and creating a platform that provides real value for members, as well as an experience that members love.
We created high fidelity designs and a prototype that reflects these signature experiences and core value propositions. We provided Sistahbiz with a presentation that tells the story of the Sistahbiz Global Network membership platform vision and how it can better address the needs of their community than anything else out there. The Sistahbiz team took this product vision and has successfully used it to secure funding and is currently working on turning their vision a reality!
Explore the prototype
“The work I do is social justice work and your team embraced it and helped me articulate and deepen my understanding of the needs of the community I serve. The insights uncovered will allow me and my team to make smarter decisions and craft more relevant and effective programs in service of equity and Sistahbiz’s mission.
Your team’s facilitation, process, and communication was a highly organized, carefully layered experience that me and my team thoroughly enjoyed. I could spend all day sharing my appreciation for all of the intricacies that were not lost on me or my team — the scheduling, the activities, the mapping and brainstorming processes and protocols, the Blink team diversity, the facilitation, the design work, the revision process, etc.”
— Makisha Boothe, Founder of Sistahbiz Global Network
