Granted: Uniting Small Community Business To Their Full Potential.
I nailed down an early direction for this project by studying the government grant funding procedure. Research helped me connect better with users (who I found to be mostly made up of small business owners) and understand their struggles. Knowing that a project like this had the potential to make ripples for small local businesses made the work all the more rewarding.
I began closely looking into a demographic of small business owners who had applied for grants and were currently going through the grant process. I also conducted research with larger companies and people who didn’t fully understand grants in order to have a control group for the study.
I used an online survey followed by more than a dozen personal face-to-face interviews with small business owners. Although some valuable data was garnered from the surveys regarding device usage, more qualitative insights and data were gained from our face-to-face interviews.
What was derived from this research process was that for those who were currently applying for grants, the procedure was stressful and tiresome. One such business owner, Ali Saheli, explained that in order to chase his dream of growing a successful business, he needs simplified access to these grants. He doesn’t want to hire a consultation company because their services can be
too costly, and he needs to save as much as he can. Applying for a government grant was one of his only options but it isn’t an enjoyable one. Majority of my interviewees complained that they found the government of Canada’s website for grant funding to be extremely tedious, confusing, and time consuming. These were all issues I wanted to reconcile through design..
1. The government website grant application process is tedious and confusing. Users who are searching for government grants don’t have the slightest clue as to what grants they are eligible for, not to mention the difficulty of
trying to navigate a very confusing interface and page hierarchy.
2. Time. This was a big one. Small business owners invest all their energy into their livelihoods. It’s already hard for them to balance their home and work life. Having to sift through countless hours of information on the government website seems dauntingly impossible for most users.
3. Users want to feel a sense of guidance. They need to know exactly what step they’re on, how many stages are left until they receive approval, and reminders for important dates and deadlines.
The first part of the planning phase was to conduct an affinity diagram. I did a user flow, site map, feature analysis, user stories, and use cases. Coming together to plan this app was very smooth. The previously gathered qualitative and quantitative data was used to form solid feature lists and ideas for this app. Three lists were formed from the available data: must-haves, nice-to-have, and must-not-have lists. Both the affinity diagram and the research data helped draw connections between all of our interviewees. As a
result, a real, believable persona could be envisioned for this project. The creation of a persona helped to clarify the target problems I wanted to tackle:
1. Streamlining the grant process while keeping the user engaged
(keep the user coming back)
2. Make the process simpler, faster, and less confusing
At this point, it was time for UI design. A “design studio” was performed to conceive an artistic direction. Ten, two-minute sprints were done, designing different pages. These quick sprints cemented a main HUB and home page for this app, alongside my on boarding screens and calendar page, side bar, and top navigation..
After the design studio, the UI work produced two different art
directions using mood boards. Upon speaking to the client, a set of appropriate colours were selected to use for the app design. On the UX side of the project, endless iterations and user testing was done on paper prototypes over the course of one week. It was important to end up with perfect flow. Next, I designed the wire frames for the side notification bar, and top navigation bar of the app plus the biggest feature, the prominent progress bar. These can be seen throughout the whole prototype on the left and top of
the screen.
The biggest iteration through testing was of the main pages. Originally, there were three pages (Past Grants, Pending Grants, and Active Grants) which were heavily confusing for users. Because these pages were met with so much confusion, it made sense to consolidate the three pages into one hybrid page: the “My Grants” page. With more testing of the design, I was able to
further simplify the process. Knowing a progress bar is so important to the user’s tracking of the grant funding process, many iterations of this feature were tested to make it as clear as possible to the user. You can see the low, medium, and high fidelity models below.
During the design of this app, I also had to be mindful of many future considerations but due to the size and scope of this project, not every desired feature could be included. Instead, a minimum viable product was created for Granted Consulting. Working closely with Granted Consulting allowed for constant client feedback. One outcome of this close work relationship was a slight change to their logo. From top to bottom was the iteration made to
the logo, which ended up being less intimidating.
Once the wire frames were finished, UI design was implemented to produce a clean look. All completed pages were linked together in Invision, ready for the client’s viewing. The presentation of the final prototype went off without a hitch, and the client absolutely loved the final product. She was engaged throughout the presentation, and couldn’t wait to start learning more about the app functionality and design.
In Conclusion
I was immediately engaged in this project from day one because I felt it was my personal contribution this community and helping to grow small, local businesses. It was enlightening to learn about grant funding and understand the users that I would be helping with this project. The process of making this app from start to finish was such an amazing experience and it was a pleasure to work with an informative and respectful client like Granted Consulting.
