Where this project fits in

While the previous case study focused on the consumer side of the platform, this one zooms in on one type of business users, the jury members. For Agorize, one of the most decisive elements when closing a deal with a new client is the consumer part of the platform, how their platform will be perceived by the general public. However, the jury part of the product plays an essential role in signing up for another challenge. It is, in fact, the only contact key influencers will have with the platform. It can literally make or break the perception of the platform by our clients.

In this case study

The process

The work we did on this part was mainly during the pilot program described in the previous case study. While the consumer side of the platform was under a test run with our client, we focused on the next phase of this challenge: the jury selection. We used the research done previously as the main source of input as well as some additional interviews with some of our most recent clients. Since the test run was ongoing, the deadline to have the jury up and running was only a couple of months away.

Why it is such a key moment

Among the top reasons for our clients to create a challenge, sourcing talents and ideas is second behind creating a marketing opportunity. Approaching the end of the challenge, a small team of experts will be mobilized to review all of the submissions and select the winners. It’s only during that time that our platform will be used by our clients.

It is the only true interaction clients will have with the platform

If at any point they experience difficulties with our platform, we can be sure they will never sign up for a new challenge. On the other hand, if they have an overwhelmingly positive experience, they will sign up for one or more challenges. Besides that very specific interaction, our clients won’t really interact with the platform.

The team

I integrated the team to lead the design of this new version of the product. I also gave a hand with the front-end development at the end of the project.

The challenges

Like the rest of the platform, the jury follows the same principle: modularity. Agorize’s platform accommodates a large variety of use cases, and that’s something we can find in the jury as well. Juries could intervene at different stages of a challenge, on different types of challenges (with different types of submissions), following different rules, grading projects differently. Taking all those variations, ​​which can sometimes be incompatible, into the final product, was definitely challenging for the entire team.

One key word: Modularity

The users

Busy and extremely knowledgeable, but with little patience, they have a lot to do and they do it on top of their daily job

Following the user research completed during the 1st phase of this project, and through some additional interviews, we established a persona for this specific user. More experienced, but also very busy, jury members are only involved in these challenges when comes to moment to select teams. Reviewing submission can be a tedious and time-consuming task. Efficiency and simplicity are key components.

Before using our platform, they tended to print out all submissions (sometimes more than 1,000 pages), grade them on Excel, and then send that spreadsheet to assistants or HRs to have them consolidate all of the answers before selecting winners.

The architecture of the product

On the jury side, the overall architecture of the platform becomes far simpler than the consumer side of it. The platform’s only function is to allow jury members to find, view and grade submissions. That means the platform is only composed of one page where all submissions can be found, searched and filtered and a separate viewer page where submissions can be viewed and graded.

Modularity—but transparent to users

The only subtlety resides, once again, in the complete modularity of the platform, allowing not just one, but several types of juries, permissions, and grades. However, all of this is completely transparent to the users.

The layouts

While imagining the product with the team, our key principles were efficiency, simplicity, and being submission focused. Everything should be fast, and allow jury members to go through the submissions in the least time possible.

The user interface

Here, like with the consumer side of the platform, we applied Brad Frost’s Atomic Design methodology to allow a great degree of modularity in this interface, allowing us to substitute components to adapt to any use cases while staying cohesive with the entire platform.

The pilot program

After just a few months after the pilot program started, it was now time to enter the jury selection phase. We were impatient to see how the platform would perform. Despite a few bugs and some divergence in usage, the feedback was quite positive; positive enough that the jury praised the solutions to our client and to another company, who signed a challenge with us soon after.

Next Projects