Hexone
Overview
Problem
Productized businesses struggle to scale due to the lack of streamlined processes and automation in their business.
Key Insights
Business owners want to streamline and scale their businesses, but lack the knowledge, resources, or time to implement custom solutions.
Solution
HexOne, a 6 in 1 client portal and project management software that is meant to be the backbone for businesses that offer productized services. It handles client onboarding, invoicing/billing, client communication, project management, file sharing, and analytics for your service offerings. Now, you can juggle fewer applications, and focus more on creating and delivering for clients.
The Brief
Develop operational software tailored specifically for businesses offering creative services, such as design agencies and marketing firms.
I took this broad goal and asked myself this question: How might I design a system that streamlines the management of a productized business?
Deliverables: A Figma prototype, a pitch presentation, and an exhibition booth.
Research
I started my research by trying to understand what's important to operating a productized businesses.
I dived through forums, videos, and anything I could find that talks about project management, client management, or productized services. I wanted to know what tools and processes these businesses are using. Below are some quotes and information that helped me understand the landscape of productized businesses.
I started to focus my audience to small or medium sized agencies (1-15 people) that offer their services as a subscription. I looked at existing productized businesses to learn more about their offerings and operations. Below is an image taken from the marketing websites of these agencies:
Discoveries
I discovered these characteristics of productized services:
- They offer multiple services at multiple price points
- They offer Unlimited requests and revisions
- They limit the # of active requests to 1 (with the option to purchase more)
- They have very quick turnarounds (often 1-3 day turnaround on design requests)
I also discovered that these businesses have two websites: one is a marketing website and the other is a web app that acts as the project management tool for running the business and onboarding clients/delivering design requests.
I dived into the tools that these businesses were using to deliver project requests and discovered that the web apps they use to run their businesses are either: created using a stack of apps to manage their projects (Stripe, Google Drive / Dropbox, Moxo, Slack, Trello, etc) or they are building proprietary software.
Competitors
Similar tools agencies are already using
My user research naturally lead to to a competitive analysis where I discovered agencies where using tools such as ManyRequests and Zendo. These two platforms became the primary focus of my analysis.
- Automatically invoices clients on their billing date
- Has a services catalog page
- Don’t allow clients to set active task without messaging the creative team
- Easy to add duplicate clients unintentionally, creating clutter in the users tab - causing more separate client portals to be generated
- Lean into automation with notifications signaling the change of an active request
- Improved flow between pages / workflows to reduce unnecessary clutter and page changing
- Build a feature that lets users send in requests via email / slack
- Has an internal notes system, so the creative team can review deliverables for a request before sending them over
- Can set free trial periods for your subscription service
- Requests are sent as message threads, there is no dedicated messages tab. Messaging your client about things unrelated to a task requires a workaround
- Sending the quote requires multiple steps to edit, confirm, and pay
- Link requests in the messages feature to allow team members to have non client facing deliverable discussions in app
- Streamline the flow to sign up for services
Research Insights
- Business owners want to juggle fewer applications and systematize more of the applications they use.
- Clients don’t always follow the systems businesses have in place, so the systems need to be adaptable.
- Productized services need to have a very specific scope.
- To scale, agencies must be able to offer multiple services, each with its own scope and pricing.
Design Strategy
My design strategy was centered around bringing simplicity and productivity to this project management tool.
Goal: Improve existing workflows and offer an all in one solution for the core functions of a productized business.
Audience: Small to Medium design agencies (1-15 people).
Design Process
My actual process was not entirely linear. I was in a constant cycle of designing, testing, getting feedback, iterating, researching, and designing more sections. Once I completed my initial research and competitive analysis, I started to rough sketch some wireframes. Since I was the only one working on this project, I stuck to completing wireframes in FigJam for the sake of simplicity and speed.
Dashboard
It was important that this page would allow the business owner to see all of the requests that are coming in, as well as the current status, and who is working on them. This specific view is from the admin view, so the productized business owner would be able to see all the important information for running their business. They can get high level insights into the lead generation of their services page, how well they are performing internally, as well as what they need to catch up on.
Requests Page
This is likely where the team would spend the most time. For this screen it was important to make it easy to see the active task as well as the queue of tasks. To make time tracking easier, I implemented the track time function near the create request, so that it was easy for team members to keep track of their time.
Adding A Request
Adding a request is the core function of this program, so I kept this simple and easy to do. By selecting the service while creating a request, it forces the client to think about the request they are making, whether it's in scope for the service they have selected, and helps to organize requests on the board. The client can add a description with some basic text formatting, add attachments, as well as set a potential deadline (used primarily for reference, so that they can keep track of the progress / plan projects).
Service Catalog
I noticed that this was a feature in some of the other tools I observed, so I decided to implement this flow in Hexone as well. This is how the marketing website and the web app would be connected. The business owner would create a service in Hexone, then on their marketing website they could create a call to action ("Start Now" "Get Started" "Choose Your Plan") to then be directed to a catalog page of all of the services. This is how we would track the analytics like customer profiles being created, abandoned signups, and page visits. The benefit of this would be that it allows the customer to pay, and immediately sign into their client portal.
The Client Portal
If Hexone is an "Index" for the productized business owner, then the client portal is the "index" for the client. It was important that the client portal contain elements that make their experience better. They can make requests, add members, upload files, share passwords securely, view invoices, and add services all from their portal.
Invoice Page
Probably the most important page. All invoices would be sent automatically to the email address that created the account, monthly on the signup date. If they add services or add-ons, it would be prorated for the month and added to that same invoice day - to keep invoices consolidated.
process Gallery
Screenshots Taken Throughout the Project
Key Features
Including Features Important to Productized Business Owners
This was added to give the business owner a quick look at how their catalog page / site is performing.
Since a lot of businesses offer turnarounds in 1-2 days, this section would quickly allow the business owner/manager to see how well they are completing and assigning tasks. The vertical lines indicate the businesses goals.
To create this feeling of a “one-stop-shop”, I added this book mark bar so that businesses could still easily link out to important tools in their internal workflow. These would not be client facing.
These allow for easy navigation through the various pages available to the client. It contains key elements that are important for both the client, and the team members working with those clients.
See the current task and upgrade the amount of active tasks by clicking on the lightning bolt.
Some elements are hidden from the client view so to see what the client is seeing, and ensure they are having a good experience, you can put yourself in the client's shoes and see it from their view.
standing out
Differentiating from Competition
Instead of offering more services and features and battle scope creep, I wanted to offer the same core features that this space already offers, but focus more on improving the flow of those features. The goal was to lessen the small little headaches that can slow you down a minute at a time.
The Bookmark Bar
This is not something that the other competitors have but is a key feature that would alleviate some users pain points. Instead of trying to do even more within this program, I wanted HexOne to act as the “one stop shop”. The “Index” as a potential user has put it. This would act as the mental grounding point for all team members, clients, and the owner for everything related to the productized business. Even if the productized business owner didn’t want to use HexOne’s invoicing, they could create a book mark to link to their preferred invoicing software. Or they can link to their own brand assets. It’s very similar in functionality to Slack, but you would be able to control the visibility based on where you create the book marks.
For example; if you create a book mark in the admin view, it is only for you and your team - if you create a bookmark in the client view, then your whole team, and the client can see it. This allows for linking internal documents for both your team and linking relevant documents for your client.
Adding Client Members
A small issue I noticed while looking at Many Requests occurred while adding another member to the ACME Corp test organization. In Many Requests while adding a member you had to manually type in the organization they are affiliated with. If you misspelled the organization or mis capitalized it, it would create a new client in the database. So you'd end up with multiple members that should be linked to the same client, but they are not. No users complained about it, but it was a key issue that could create headache for the users and bloated databases for the business. So to avoid this issue with HexOne, I put the add member function inside of the client page. This would automatically set the client page you are on as the organization as you create a new team member, keeping this issue from happening.
Final Design
Final Key UI Screens of Hexone
Reflections
Things I Might Do Differently
My biggest takeaway from this project would have been assigning multiple scopes. That sounds a little dangerous but what I mean is to set this project up in stages, each with their own scopes. As I reflect, I think my largest struggle stemmed from building an understanding of the landscape and the tools that are being used. It took a lot of research to begin to understand the problems, and opportunities that could be taken in the space. Because of that, I was focused on first building out the idea of a platform that was on the same playing field as these other tools. While I think that was important, if I were to take this approach again I would spend more time focusing in on very specific user flows and actions. In hindsight, I would have liked to spend more time on the request functionality and improving that flow. I would like to explore using a Slack integration to create design requests straight from Slack or even email. But those were put on the back burner to effectively convey the idea of this "all-in-one" platform.
If I had more time - I'd spend more time on the requests function and the integrations that could be included in that user flow.