Figma
Notion
Miro
My role
UX/UI design
Research & testing
In-app brand activation
Product strategy for a business education platform
Who I work with
Co-founder, Business/Marketing
Co-founder, CTO
Chief Learning Officer
I worked with Simbi's founders to build their brand and design the first iteration of a business education platform as a mobile no-code app.
After an initial round of consulting, I was invited to join the founding team to build a second web-based version of the platform built in React.js and Django.
I led all of the designs for the second version of the platform by conducting workshops with the team and translating existing research into responsive web patterns that focused on accessible learning.
Our team is currently in a development phase, utilizing the Agile Scrum framework to build and ship iterative work.
Project Scope
Design a fully responsive web-app with 4 complimentary features
Find product market fit for user long-term user segments
Develop a design system for faster, consistent design and development
Simbi's target audience is students and young adults who are interested in entrepreneurship, either on their own or in a school group setting. One of our design principles is to make sure the platform is accessible to all learners, regardless of their background or experience.
Students
As a student entrepreneur, I want to learn the fundamentals of how a business works so that I can start and scale my own small business.
School Administrators
As a school administrator, I want my business-minded students to have a community-backed resource so that I can offer better cost-effective entrepreneurship education.
The platform was originally a mobile-first design, capturing the same sense of on-the-go learning as Duolingo. We focused on creating motivation through a fun and interactive the brand, keep a high level of usability, and gamify the lessons.
Due to constraints on the team and limited resources, the first iteration was a no-code app that peaked interested but yielded mixed insights from our target audience.
Video walkthrough coming soon
No-code mobile app
We launched the no-code app and tested it with a waitlist of students and school groups. After gathering feedback we identified different needs across our primary user segments.
Both groups held a largely positive sentiment toward the content and its value which indicated that Simbi was on the right track. However, we identified problems with the brand being too unprofessional and the mobile no-code apps having a lot of bugs.
Since most people learn on laptops in a school context, mobile also proved to be less usable than a desktop or ipad which allows for more dedicated and focused learning.
Students User Segment (B2C)
Value
Content
Brand
Usability
Schools User Segment (B2B)
Value
Content
Brand
Usability
To overcome the technical and usability issues, we decided to code a web-first version of the app. We introduced a community clubs with threads and a business plan builder feature to align our product with our user stories.
The new desktop version increased functional capability but also led to more complexity and a scrappy development process. At the time we had no design system and communication in Figma was limited. The dev process is on-going and scheduled to be finished early Fall 2023.
Video walkthrough coming soon
Responsive web designs
While building the web app, our team gathered insights on Simbi’s in-app brand experience being too whimsical and unstructured for our user segments. We also reflected on the development disconnects in our scrappy process which led to planning a Simbi design system in Figma to modernized the in-app brand experience and further align design with development.
The new design features a modular approach to system design organizing both Simbi and student generated content to make the flow of learning and communication seamless. Our hypothesis is that supporting both the fast-paced learning style of Gen-z, as well as the more structured style of millennials captures a balance that our users need to thrive.
We plan to release the simplified DS components and patterns iteratively as we gain a larger research data set and validate our updates.
Video walkthrough coming soon
Simbi design system
I’ve been apart of Simbi’s team since January 2023 with consulting work going back to June 2022. In that time, I collaborated with the founding team to design visual systems, plan Simbi’s system design, and deliver a research-backed platform design. Simbi now has WIP design system including principles, brand styles, component library, patterns, and screens.
We are still working to find product market fit within our core user groups but more to come from Simbi!
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Copyright Josh Meyers 2023