What’s the challenge here?
Initially, this project caught our attention because of its strong social background. In Indonesia, women often juggle multiple roles, especially in informal businesses and MSMEs. Their challenges aren’t simple on one hand, they’re growing their businesses, but on the other, skilled workforce access is still a big hurdle.
Tatistics show that women’s labor force participation is still far below men’s, with only about 60.2% compared to men’s 86.9% in 2023.
This situation led us to ask ourselves:
How can we help women entrepreneurs in Indonesia overcome the shortage of skilled manpower in an easy and effective way? 🤔
As a team of four women with backgrounds in UI Design and UX Research, we felt motivated to create a solution that supports women’s roles in business 💥
In our initial discussions and research, we involved 21 participants: 18 in surveys and 3 in in-depth interviews. The research provided valuable insights into the needs and challenges our users face. Let me share some of our findings and demographics with you:
🔑 Key Survey Insights:
Most respondents admitted they lacked understanding of how to break into the global market to grow their businesses, indicating a need for guidance and education on international markets.
Many also mentioned needing skilled labor to help with business operations, especially those knowledgeable in specific areas that would allow them to compete in wider markets.
Overall, they were optimistic that women’s participation in business could support growth, though they still needed significant help with HR access and information.
In the second stage of our user research, we conducted in-depth interviews with three female MSME owners aged 25 to 45, who already had business experience and were actively seeking additional help through digital platforms. Through these interviews, we identified specific challenges they faced and their hopes for a platform that could bridge their needs.
🔑 Key Interview Insights:
Female MSME owners we interviewed expressed significant challenges in finding easily accessible skilled workers.
They also felt that their lack of experience in recruitment and HR management was a major obstacle to business growth, especially for expansion that requires multiple people.
Many hoped for guidance and connections to professional networks to become more self-sufficient in managing their businesses.
What’s the main problem?
After diving into our research findings, we realized that the core challenge facing female MSME owners in Indonesia is
The difficulty in finding skilled workers who meet their business needs. Their lack of experience in recruitment and HR management also hinders business growth, especially for those wanting to go global ☹
This problem made us think hard about how to offer a solution that can simplify and streamline the recruitment process.
So, what’s the solution?
We proposed Nexla as a solution, a platform that isn’t just a freelancer marketplace specifically for women but also includes a supermom badge and an AI assistant named Nixi, which recommends candidates tailored to users’ business needs 🤩
Features like Point Reward and exclusive content were also designed to provide additional knowledge resources for female entrepreneurs, making Nexla an ecosystem that supports MSME growth.
Our Point Reward feature allows users who hire freelancers through Nexla to earn points that can be redeemed for exclusive content and workshops. By providing ratings and reviews, users can accumulate points, and we believe this will give them an extra push to keep growing with Nexla.
We also offer Exclusive Content as a knowledge resource accessible through a premium subscription. This aims to provide access to business information and networking to help them plan better strategies, even for those aiming to go global.
Alongside these awesome features, Nexla’s user flow is designed to make the process of finding and hiring freelancers as smooth as possible. Users can select freelancers from the homepage, filter candidates based on their needs, connect with them via chat, schedule interviews, and complete contracts with automated payroll management once the work is done. Each step is designed to make the recruitment process easier for users.
Not only that, but we also created the basic visual layout of each page, ensuring key elements like the marketplace page, freelancer profiles, and chat room layout on Nexla. The wireflow helped our team review the interaction flow and ensure easy navigation from one stage to the next according to the defined user flow.
Once the wireframes were ready, we started developing high-fidelity designs that combined Nexla’s visual identity with soft yet professional colors. The design shows a more realistic look and helps users understand how the platform works, including features like search filters, chat with AI, and special badges for female freelancers.
We brought these hi-fidelity design elements together into Nexla’s interactive prototype. This allowed users to test out each major feature, like finding freelancers, using filters, interacting with Nixi, and sending contracts. This prototype enabled us to test the user experience in-depth and gather valuable feedback before launching the platform.
After testing Nexla’s prototype with four participants, we achieved a usability testing score of 5.25 😨
This result showed that most users felt comfortable with Nexla’s layout and flow. However, some feedback suggested simplifying the point redemption page as some users found it confusing. This feedback provided us with valuable insight for the next iteration.
Based on this usability testing, I took the lead on iterating the UI design for the point redemption page by simplifying instructions and adding visual icons to guide users through redeeming their points. This was done to make this feature more intuitive and accessible for new users and those less familiar with reward systems.
Nexla has successfully become a platform that supports women in accessing skilled labor, whether for professional needs or smaller scales like internships. It functions not only as a freelancer marketplace but also as a space for women’s empowerment, giving them the chance to grow and sustainably scale their businesses.
👀 Looking ahead, we plan to develop a Live Chat Mentor feature to offer direct assistance to users when they need advice from experts. Long-term, we aim to implement a work-life balance feature with a reminder agenda based on gamification, to help keep remote work healthy and balanced for both freelancers and female MSME owners on Nexla.
With Nexla, we believe we’re not just supporting women entrepreneurs in growing their businesses but also contributing to women’s empowerment in Indonesia’s MSME sector.
Insights!
Throughout this case study project, I’ve learned so much. I learned to apply design thinking methods, from understanding user needs, identifying critical problems, to developing solutions from these root issues. To delve into this process, I spent time reading various references, watching UX research videos, and trying other digital products to observe how they approach user needs and create positive impact. It was truly exciting to design a solution that’s relevant to users through this project.
Thanks for reading!
Thank you for following along on this journey! I hope it gave you useful insights into UI/UX design and inspired you to keep learning 📚
