Reimagining Scroobious

A virtual platform and community designed to efficiently connect early-stage founders, investors, and partners.

  • Founders of small startups need a user-friendly guide for uploading & publishing their pitch deck on the Scroobious’ platform to increase the number of successful uploads and publications, thereby improving their chances of securing funding for their startup.

  • To gain insight into user experiences on the Scroobious platform, we interviewed three founders: one who had published content, one with an uploaded deck (without video), and another in the process of creating a deck.

  • Increase the percentage of founders on the Scroobious platform that upload and publish their pitches after completing the Learn Pip modules.

  • The team consisted of:

    · Allison (CEO), Daniel (Head of Product), Toni (Strategic Consult), Nicole (UX/UI Lead), Callistius (UX/UI Designer), and me (UX/UI Strategy and Design Researcher)

  • Week 1: Strategy & Research | Week 2: User Research

    Week 3: UI Design | Week 4: Final Design

Project Overview

Scroobious is an AI-powered, algorithmic-driven platform connecting founders and investors with the mission of increasing diversity in the startup ecosystem. The web application is a two-sided marketplace that provides founders with education about creating a fundraising pitch and connects them with early-stage investors.

Founders can sign up for different paid plans that give them access to educational resources and personalized feedback from trained reviewers to guide them through the process of crafting and publishing their pitch to the investor portal. Additionally, investors can sign up for a paid plan that gives them access to the investor portal, interact and message founders.

The Scroobious Team challenged Springboard design trainees to address the problem statement: recommend and implement changes that better support our customers. Given this broad scope, we were also challenged to identify solutions to guide founders through uploading final pitch material and publishing it to their investor-facing side of the platform.

My involvement in this project involved participating in all stages of the design process with a main focus on competitive research, affinity mapping, user flows, and sketches.

The Challenge

To increase engagement and provide a smooth flow from crafting to publishing a pitch deck, the Scroobious team was searching for a solution to address the following:

For Founders…

Increase accessibility and clarity: provide founders with an intuitive platform that allows them to conveniently monitor their progress and analyze engagement levels.

For Investors…

Boost interactions: offer investors an easy pathway to communicate with founders of interest.

Thus we asked:

How might we create a user friendly guide to increase the number of successful uploads and publications to better support Scroobious customers?

01 The Research Process

Our team began the project with the two objectives: understanding the angel investment industry and our target users. Utilizing a variety of research methods, I facilitated and oversaw the making of our research resources, competitive analysis template, and interview guides.

Secondary Research

Conducted competitive analysis to understand how current competitors are performing.

Evaluations

Performed heuristic evaluations to gather insights and measure the usability of user interfaces.

Semi-structured Interviews

Scheduled individual virtual interviews with 3 founders of varying publishing states.

What did we uncover?

The initial themes around why founders lack the motivation to upload and publish their pitches and what they look for in the “post-publishing” stage.

After conducting research, we identitfied patterns and attempted to collect them preliminary into groups. We found the process of uploading and publishing a pitch deck can be categorized into three main principles: enhance, streamline, and expand.

We discovered that the founders engagement and frustrations involved these factors.

Synthesizing Research & Forming Insights

Taking our groups and sub-themes from affinity mapping we constructed our findings into top insights to guide our next steps.

1. Motivation

Lack of motivation to upload and publish pitches & a perceived disconnect between founders and investors.

2. User Flow/Layout

Unnecessary items on top navigation and lack of information available on video upload screen.

3. Desired Features

Published user experienced a lack of post-publishing clarity, struggled to find the dashboard, and desired more editing options.

4. What’s Working

Current methods and features that have kept the user engagement and active on the platform.

02 Piecing the flow together

Once we formulated our top insights our next task required us to evaluate our priorities.

1. User Flow

Create a continuous streamline from create, upload, publish, to insights.

2. Publishing Screen

Include an investor side preview and celebratory confirmation once successfully published.

3. Dashboard

Incorporate insights such as analytics to allow users to interpret engagement levels.

4. Reach Investors

Form an investor information page to increase connectivity.

Refining our HMW statements

HMW create a user friendly guide to increase the number of successful uploads and publications to better support Scroobious customers?

Before

HMW motivate users to upload and publish their pitches more effectively, addressing their lack or motivation encouragement from interviews?

During

HMW improve the post-publishing experience to provide founders with a better understanding of what information investors see, how they can edit/update their published content, and facilitate a smoother navigation to the Dashboard?

After

03 Idea Exploration

Informed by our research insights, we began generating first idea sketches for:

1. Build Pip Screen

From our user flows, I created a build pip screen that allows users to build their profile as they are seeing it from an investor side view. Additionally, I included a progress bar to further motivate the user to publish and allow them to easily track their progress.

2. Dashboard Screen

The dashboard is now strategically placed on the navigation bar. Now users have an accessible way to track their insights and have it showcased in a visual appeasing matter.

Constructing Solutions: Low Fidelity

Due to time constraints, we presented our low-fidelity prototype to the Scroobious team. They offered constructive feedback which we implemented into our revised screens.

Initial Build Pip Screen

Description: Based on the insights gathered from interviews, our initial Build Pip Screen included an investor-side view and of a progress bar. We also implemented pop-ups to facilitate container editing.

  • Feedback 1: Team suggested removal of action buttons on the page due to concern with overwhelming users.

  • Feedback 2: Team was concerned with the usage of pop ups when editing containers.

Revised Build Pip Screen

Implementation:

  • Drop down menu

  • Consistency

  • Minimizing amount of action buttons

Initial Dashboard Screen

Description: Based on the insights gathered from interviews, our initial Dashboard Screen included analytics and insights, founder spotlight, progress bar, events/perks, and a link for community topics on Slack.

  • Feedback 1: Team suggested creating first user states to show screens that have yet to be filled.

  • Feedback 2: Team recommended switching analytics/insights with a progress bar to motivate founders.

Revised Dashboard Screen

Implementation:

  • Reorganizing

  • First user state

  • Including community section

Initial Help Icon Pop Up

Description: Based on the insights gathered from interviews, to help users as they build their profile we added a help icon that incorporates the Scroobious logo.

  • Feedback 1: Team was concerned if the uniqueness of the icon would confuse first time users.

  • Feedback 2: Team suggested making the icon universal by adding a “?”.

Revised Help Icon Pop Up

Implementation:

  • Back to the drawing board and redesigning

04 Final Design Recommendations

Although the Scroobious team was impressed with our team’s effort over the one month course, they offered key suggestions to better refine our final design.

In the real world, working in bit size pieces is more typical. Defining the problem statement more concisely would have allowed for a clear direction.

Define

Some of our team’s offered suggestions deemed impossible to implement. It is crucial to reflect on the utility on components and communicate to team to ensure that our goals are feasible.

Purpose

The viewer would feel less overwhelmed if we focused on simplifying and refining our low-fidelity screens, as they appeared to lack efficiency.

Streamline

04 Reflections, Reflections.

As someone who has minimal knowledge of financing small business ventures in exchange for equity or the entirety of the angel investment industry, this problem space initially felt like an intimidating undertaking. In addition to working in an unfamiliar industry, this happened to be my first professional experience working directly with a client. I definitely put a lot of pressure on myself to prove to my team and myself, that I had the skills necessary to tackle the problem statement.

Over the course of the internship, our team faced several obstacles, from searching and scheduling interviews with founders, multiple setbacks, and handling a large scope. Although in the moment it felt overwhelming and discouraging, it taught me the importance of adaptability and reformulating. Any pivot I encountered, I would reflect and ask myself, what decision making process would be most beneficial to the user maneuvering through the platform? Given the broad scope of our problem space, putting the user front and center gave structure and direction.

Working on this project had its learning curves, but it helped me grow and improve as a new designer. I will definitely be carrying out these acquired skills and lessons into future projects.