Lightful

Background

Lightful are a beyond profit startup whose purpose is to strengthen relationships between good people and great causes. Their core offering is a SaaS product that allows beyond profits and charities to manage and run more effective social media campaigns to raise awareness about important causes.

Lightful had already released a very early stage MVP to the public and had a small user based of early adopters using the platform. However, it was clear that if the business wanted to meet it's acquisition targets, then the platform would need to be re-visited from a UX standpoint and overhauled to provide a better online experience.

The approach

• 1. Sitemap - create a sitemap that outlines main functionality
• 2. Wireframing - create low-fidelity wireframes to understand the journey
  
• 3. Prototyping - build interactive prototypes to address functional requirements
• 4. UI style guide - define a UI style guide with in-house design team

1. Sitemap

Sitemaps were created that mapped out the main functionality and screens of the platform. These provided the basis of the architecture and were used as a reference point that provided a holistic overview of how the initial experience would come together.

2. Wireframing

I created early stage wireframes for some of the key platform features using Balsamiq, but after some discussion with the team I decided that moving toward interactive prototyping would be a much better approach to communicate layout and interaction solutions to the development team and other business stakeholders.

3. Prototyping

I created functional prototypes that allowed me to share and review my proposed design solutions with the development team and business stakeholders. Using UXPin, I was not only able to prototype complex functionality with ease, but also work in a quick and iterative way that allowed me to meet the demanding timelines of the project.

4. UI style guide

I also collaborated closely with the in-house design team to conceptualise and create a UI pattern library that could be applied across both the online web platform and mobile app. The pattern library provided a consistent set of elements that could be easily re-used by the design and development teams for further updates and feature releases within the platform.

Outcomes

The updated Lightful platform launched in early 2018 and the company has recently raised over £4m in seed funding to continue the platform's growth and expansion.