ESG Awareness and Partnership Platform
Our client was The German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) who requested a low-fidelity prototype of a public web app that promoted ESG awareness and business networking. Our services included UX Design, UI Design, and Prototyping.
Companies in developed markets who are required to comply with ESG standards have difficulty finding ESG compliant partnerships in developing markets. Our design objective was to increase awareness of ESG standards in developing markets while creating a network of visible and eligible partners from across the world.
A free online networking and ESG awareness platform that promotes sustainable international business partnerships. To gain access to the network of companies adhering to ESG standards around the world, each user profile must first attain a Minimum Awareness Score by completing assessments found in the app. Additionally, users have access to free online course material and ESG Compliance Consultants to help to educate their organisations.
Whimsical
Figma
Adobe Photoshop
Project Manager
UX Designer
UI Designer
Copywriter
UX design
UX research
Brand Strategy
UI Design
Prototyping
Workshop facilitation
Project Management
Overall: 8+ weeks
Discovery & Research: 2+ weeks
Design & testing: 3 weeks
We wanted to define the goals, challenges and preferences of the target users. We created 2 personas for each of the user segments, ESG Aware companies and Non-ESG Aware companies. The personas were based on a market research collaboration between our team in Africa and our client based in Europe. We used these personas to detail the different user journeys and to define a MVP that would help each user to achieve their primary goal.
Each User Persona explored the challenges and goals of companies on either side of the developed and developing markets.
We discovered that the lack of visibility of eligible partnerships was an equal challenge for both sides, though perpetuated by different factors in each market.
With the client’s goal of raising funding in mind, we chose to map the user journeys which would best showcase the benefits of the platform and help build a realistic prototype to attract investment. The journeys enabled us to identify the core user activities required to gain a Minimum Awareness Score and the basic networking functionality required for the platform’s first release. This assisted us greatly in rooting out inefficiencies and designing lean paths that kept the user journeys short and simple.
The user journeys also helped the client to identify their limitations as an authority on ESG subject matter. I facilitated team workshops and client meetings to ideate a minimum viable product that would offer real value to the users but not exceed the client’s capacity to verify or enforce ESG Standards Compliance.
The outcome of these discussions was a new objective for the platform to promote and verify awareness, not compliance. This increased accessibility for any business to qualify to join the global sustainable network.
We began with low-fidelity sketches and wireframes based on initial meetings with our client, their objectives, and our user personas. The sketches assisted to visualise and test layouts of the app dashboards.
The main purpose of my sketches was to save time by experimenting with ideas at low stakes.
Our design team sketched multiple versions to find the design that offered the simplest user flow and best white space ratio.
Using Whimsical, our designers converted my first sketches into low-fidelity wireframes. Then, we improved them by adding copy provided by our content strategist. Our aim was to assist the client to visualise the concept when we presented our initial design of the app, and to have an opportunity to test it. The client was happy with our interpretation of their idea at this stage so we moved on to designing the high-fidelity prototype.
The initial design required users to sign in or register to access the free ESG learning material and to keep a record of their progress. However, this workflow proved to imped on the experience of users who only required quick access to learning information without the intent to complete an assessment or to achieve an ESG Awareness Score.
Lengthy access to learning material
The initial design required users to sign in or register to access the free ESG learning material and to keep a record of their progress. However, this workflow proved to imped on the experience of users who only required quick access to learning information without the intent to complete an assessment or to achieve an ESG Awareness Score.
New menu links on landing page and dashboard
We iterated the user workflows by creating a separate “Learner Journey” that could begin directly from the landing page. To achieve this, we created new menu links to a ‘Resources’ portal and added one to the landing page menu and another more visibly in the dashboard menu. We also removed restrictions to the Resources portal, with no sign-in required.
Lack of access to ESG Experts
During testing we discovered that the ambiguity around the subject of ESG standards was a limiting factor for users to fully engage with the platform as they were not always confident about how they could help their organisations achieve ‘sustainable partnerships’.
Introduction of ESG consultants on platform
We introduced ESG Consultants as an additional user type and a platform community member. Then, we added new profile cards to the networking portal for consultants which business could use to connect with experts. We also added an ‘About ESG’ section on the landing page to improve user knowledge on the topic. Our deisgners segmented and simplified the information in this section by creating icon cards.
We designed the final screens in Figma. Our goal was to create an inviting visual identity that would help to make the subject of ESG less daunting to business organisations. Also, we researched the competition and took inspiration from design catalogues in similar fields.
The visual style we chose was light, fresh and fun, to encourage engagement.
We followed the GIZ’s brand style guide when choosing the design elements
The prototype was designed as a web app for desktop
Our final design reflected our learnings about our users who’s primary goals where to learn, find help and to gain access to economic opportunities.
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