Product, Identity Design, Illustration

Akigora

Background

Based in Bordeaux, Akigora carefully selects freelance professionals with over a decade of experience and puts them in contact with companies and educational institutions who seek their expertise.

Project type: Desktop website redesign

Scope: Identity, UX/UI and illustration

Duration: Six weeks

Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop

Year: 2023

The challenge

I was tasked with identifying user pain points in the existing recruiter registration user flow and presenting solutions via an interactive prototype.

1. Empathize

A. Secondary Research

I conducted secondary research on Akigora's industry, market, and user behavior. This included reading articles, analyzing Google Reviews, and listening to a 1-hour interview with founder Guillaume Mouzet.

B. Competitive Benchmark

I assessed Akigora’s competition to understand strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for a better user experience.

C. User Interviews

I conducted one-on-one interviews with Akigora users to understand their platform usage, likes, dislikes, and challenges. Here's what they said:

2. Define

A. Heuristics Analysis

I found some things that could make signing up easier for recruiters thanks to a heuristics analysis of the user flow.

B. User Persona

From what I found in my research, I put together a user persona to inform the design phase.

C. User Journey

A visualization outlining Julie’s interactions with Akigora, from initial encounter to task completion.

D. Problem Statement

“Recruiters searching senior freelancers are deterred by complex sign-up processes. They need a simpler way to search them”

3. Ideate

A. Worst Idea

First, I did a "worst idea" exercise, which sparks innovation by kicking things off with the most counterintuitive design ideas.

C. Crazy 8’s

A visualization outlining Julie’s interactions with Akigora, from initial encounter to task completion.

4. Prototype

A. Low-fidelity prototype

I just sketched out the notions that resulted from the ideation phase into a hand-drawn wireframe.

B. Medium-fidelity prototype

I made a mid-fidelity prototype to make the design feel more real, still prioritizing functionality over perfection.

C. Usability Testing

I evaluated the efficiency of the prototype to identify problems and gather feedback by observing 3 separate users interact with it in real time.

D. High-fidelity prototype