Co-Founder
Product Designer
Lavalab Startup
Jan 2022 - May 2022
Figma
Prototyping
User Research
Branding
@Nick Hensel
@Ian Brash
@Trevor Asbery
During Spring 2022, I joined Lavalab, a student-run product incubator. As part of the new cohort, I was paired with three other individuals (a product manager and two developers) to build a start-up. Our startup is Paper, an app that makes expense reporting easier. Over the course of this semester-long project, we built up the business, conducting user and competitor research. By the end of the semester, we had a working prototype that was able to store receipts automatically when a payment is made on any Square terminal.
At the end of the semester, each Lavalab team presents their product at Demo night to a panel of judges. We got to set up a booth for people to see our project and try our prototype. So proud of my team :)
A modern and energetic style with an emphasis on simplicity and ease of use. Paper was designed to be satisfying to use with it's bubble designs and intuitive features.
.gif)
By conducting user research and constructing user personas, we discovered that the expense reporting process for all business owners and accountants is often tedious and time consuming. Any person who has to do any level of business work will have business expenses to deduct which makes this problem pressing for a wide variety of businesspeople.
It was difficult to navigate the map feature because it did not function like familiar map platforms. For the sake of unique design, the game sacrificed a smooth user flow.
There were multiple panels that included a large amount of text that made it difficult to gauge important information. This is especially detrimental to this game since it is story-focused.
The prototype attempted to be unique with iconography and other aspects of the design which led to a design that was unintuitive because it deviated from existing app norms.
The current business expense reporting process is long and tedious, involving multiple parties, making the process inefficient and time-consuming.
Expense report needs: Date, Account, Expense Category (Hotel, Travel, Food, etc.)
If rejected, the employee will not get a reimbursement or will have to resubmit information.
If rejected, the information is sent back to the manager who will then send it back to the employee.
In order to gauge the current market for receipt management and expense reporting, we conducted extensive competitor research. We found that ramp is the closest to the product that we decided to build based on our user research and the needs of our target audience.
The visual identity was established through a series of iterations for our company idea pitch. Over the course of the semester, we had the opportunity to give weekly pitches as our company ideas developed.
The first challenge as the product designer of the team is to design a pitch deck for our product manager to use in his delivery. Originally, our idea centered around the utilization of blockchain, so in the first iteration of our pitch deck, I opted for gradients and a textured glass effect to match the futuristic and colorful energy of other blockchain companies.
A few weeks into the process, we decided as a team to stray away from the blockchain space and opt for a simpler method of receipt tracking. This is mainly because of the drawbacks with using blockchain, including the difficulty to develop without a full team of developers and its huge negative impact on the environment. Thus, as a designer, it was necessary for me to lean away from the bright futuristic design associated with the blockchain space. With that in mind, I rebranded paper as a b2b tech company, with a focus on simplicity and ease of use.
With the new style established by the second iteration of slide decks, I was able to create a brand identity and design system for the MVP and for future presentation decks for Paper.
With a branding guide and a solid presentation deck for the idea, we needed to create a prototype for the MVP (Minimal Viable Product). Our MVP was designed for mobile devices since it's main use is the convenience of expense reporting at user's fingertips.
While created much later in the process, the user flow is useful to look at in order to understand which screens needed to be made. The reason why this was created later for this specific project is because the client had already given us a few screens to design. It was only later that we created a user flow to connect all the separate screens into a cohesive game.
Our low-fidelity drafts were wireframes that outlined the layout for each page. I was tasked with creating the main menu page and so I created multiple iterations, playing with different layouts. I also experimented with different main map layouts.
For our final product prototype, we included a number of features, including an extensive tutorial for simple onboarding, discover feature to find new businesses, and an innovative live feature to bring a personal aspect to online business. View our final prototype here.
After five months of conducting intensive research, building slide decks, and creating an MVP, the Paper team was finally able to finish the MVP, an app that was not only prototyped in Figma but developed with basic functionality. If someone was to sign into the MVP, they would be able to see their receipts immediately from any transaction done at a Square terminal.
The MVP consisted mainly of a sign up flow and a receipt management tool. The sign up flow is pretty basic, but highlights the process of creating an account, including inputting credit card information for easy expense tracking.
This portion of the MVP is fully functional with most Square terminals. Anyone signing in with their email will receive alerts about their purchases and get a fully itemized receipt with spaces to input the information needed to generate an expense report.
While we understood that there was a need for an expense reporting system, we found it really difficult to pinpoint who exactly needed this tool and who would be the one implementing it. For example, even if this tool would make a CEO's assistant's work easier, the assistant would not be the one making the executive decision to implement the tool. Furthermore, there was the issue of adapting the app into a business' existing accounting ecosystem. These continue to be issues that, should the project continue, must be resolved.
I've very rarely worked with a developer team in the past, and usually only implemented design prototypes so this was a special challenge for this project. I needed to communicate my designs with the developers and ensure that whatever I design is feasible. I paid extra attention to creating a clear user flow and explaining the aspects necessary to develop my designs.
I primarily took on the designer role, creating slide decks, branding guides and the MVP. However, on top of the design role, as a co-founder, I also helped dictate the direction of the product. I came to meetings with agendas and set a timeline for the team to work with. I also worked closely with my product manager to write out the pitch for Paper.
This project has since been discontinued because of the team's various commitments and the feasibility of the product, but if it continues, I think we would need to conduct a lot more user research to better determine our niche and better solidify our target audience.
Design-wise, while I do like the simple branding, I think I can definitely work on making the user flow more cohesive, especially the notification to information input system. It's crucial that we cut the time it takes to record the information behind a purchase as efficient as possible to provide as much of a value add as possible. The more efficient it is, the more incentive there is for businesses to implement the app into their ecosystem.
