Combined invoicing and inventory service MVP

Helping a team of e-commerce veterans to turn their custom in-house solution into a product

ROLE

Lead Product Designer

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People management

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Project scoping

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Project planning

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Stakeholder management

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Design management

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Research design

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Field research

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Workshop design

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Workshop facilitation

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Prototyping and testing

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Presenting and documenting work

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EMPLOYER

As a solo consultant in partnership with

Why Partners

Digital product design, branding and communication agency

Client

Challenge

The founders had extensive insights on what makes an invoicing solution work for retailers.

Where they needed help, is choosing a first target market and designing a first MVP for it.

People

As a contracting Product Design Lead I led Why Partners' senior team of UX designers, UI designers and Communication experts.

Results

The prototypes made the founders’ concept tangible, which helped them pitch their service to prospects and early-adopters.

Process

We first looked for a market segment, that would pay for even a subset of their planned features.
After a series of interviews, contextual inquiries, customer journey mapping and data crunching (market data, competitor analysis) two MVP candidates emerged.
We went forward with the MVP most inline with the founders’ market familiarity.
The final step was designing the actual MVP. We designed the information architecture, flows, functional and high-fi wireframes (Sketch, Invision). Together with our branding experts we developed an initial brand strategy.

Contextual inquiry with a sole proprietor

Mapping customer archetypes based on the UVP's dimensions

Map of key customer segments and their adoption paths in relation to the key two Unique Value Proposition identified

Invoicing customer journey for mid-sized company

Hi-fi wireframe of the invoice list with a chart of total value invoiced

Final UI design for the dashboard's cash-flow overview

Design research archetypes informing the launch communication strategy

Highlight

During the contextual inquiries I learned that invoicing for SMEs is habitual and its tool is of small importance. These two qualities made getting people to adopt a new invoicing solution really hard.
The customer journeys highlighted moments where the MVP could tap into existing habit triggers and contexts where customers were open for communication.
These factors profoundly affected market development opportunities, therefore played a crucial role in choosing the initial target segment for the first MVP.