Project Management
Dashboard
University of Toronto
✨
IN SUMMARY
💭 How can we help freelancers to simplify their workflow?
Freelancers constantly battle inefficiency caused by juggling disconnected tools for project tracking, invoicing and expense management. These fragmented workflows waste time and create stress.
✅ Our Solution
Project Management Dashboard is a website for freelancers that consolidates project tracking, invoicing, and expense management as a one-stop platform. It simplifies daily workflow and empower freelancers to take control of their time and productivity.
Section
Business
Platform
Desktop
Tools
Figma
Team Members
Becky Wong
Dunia Stanojevic
Flora Guo
Mona Urata
Saruda Srithunya
My Roles
Primary Research
Secondary Research
To-Be Scenario
Medium Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
💫
RESEARCH
💭 What are some challenges freelancers facing?
We started off by gathering secondary and primary research to explore our problem space on what freelancers are struggling these days. Three main themes emerged from the secondary research:
Managing a heavy workload
Lack of consistent work/
Job Instability
Solely managing their finances
📝 Our primary research consisting of 62 survey responses and 12 semi-structured interview.
🔑 Key findings indicate strong preference for administration automation (invoicing and expense management), better communication technique, and consolidated tooling to reduce the need for switching between different platforms.
Administration automation
"Prefers a single system for invoicing, expense tracking, and taxes."
📢 Participant #1
Consolidated tools
"Having everything in one place would cut down on tool-switching."
📢 Participant #6
Better communication
"Clients get updates and have access to performance metrics and goals."
📢 Participant #7
This is "Freelancer Frank" 👋, our representative user
His needs: Good time management skills
Obstacles: Too many platforms. He loses track of where to find what.
Goals: Wants to maintain a good work-life balance and manage administrative tasks seamlessly
💭 To help Frank, our project aims to….
We decided to provide a solution that increases working efficiency and improves his work-life balance with a focused problem on a lack of organization.
🌟
IDEATION
💭 Brainstorming ideas
As a creative exercise, we each wrote down as many ideas as possible by focusing on Frank's key pain points: managing time effectively and streamlining his workflow. These were ideas generated and categorized using Prioritization Grid.
🥇The winner is…..
After careful considering, we chose to combine the One Stop Platform and Expectation Setter from the "Big Bets" category. We also incorporated key features like Expense Manager and Invoice Generator into the platform
🌟
DESIGNING
✏️ Low Fidelity Paper Prototype
The key features of our platform include project management, invoice generation, and expense management. We began by sketching the main structures of the app, such as the homepage, Invoices page, and Expenses page.
On the Homepage, everything starts with project management. It’s where users can easily keep an eye on all their projects and check off tasks from their to-do lists for each one.
Project Management Feature: Adding New Project
The Invoices Page is where users can effortlessly create and track invoices while staying on top of their status with easy filtering options. A search bar is built right in to help users quickly find specific invoices to save time.
The Expenses Page allows user to either upload receipt or manually add expenses.
💭 Lean Evaluation
During the design process, we received feedback from our classmates and a professional UX designer. After presenting our low-fidelity prototype, they highlighted key features that needed improvement.
⛔️ Platform Navigation: no option for searching project on the homepage
⛔️ Project Management Features: a request of more detailed client description and clearer pathway to completed projects
⛔️ Financial Management: a request for a feature to select a date range.
✏️ Medium Fidelity Prototype
After receiving feedbacks, we then moved on to implement additional features into our medium fidelity prototype using Figma.
Invoicing: Creating new invoice, Sort By filter
