The Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub
September 2023
Overview
Successfully initiated the redesign of the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub's (BEKH) registration form—a crucial tool for their nationwide collaboration with stakeholders and Black entrepreneurs. Proposed solutions involving gamification and interactive elements to make the intake process more intuitive and engaging, addressing user concerns and aligning with BEKH’s mission, while ensuring improved usability and a more streamlined experience for their upcoming ministerial presentation.
The Problem
The Solution
Old - Not my work
Results
Reflection
Skills
UX Design, UI Design, Interaction Design, User Research, Heuristic Evaluation
Timeline & Status
September 2023
My Role
UX Design Consultant
Registration Process
The Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (BEKH) is a transformative initiative designed to foster collaboration among Black entrepreneurs, community organizations, academic institutions, and stakeholders from the public and private sectors. As part of their mission, BEKH leads a national study to drive meaningful impact. However, they faced a significant challenge with their registration form, which had received consistent negative feedback for being confusing, overly lengthy, and visually unappealing. Recognizing its importance, especially with an upcoming presentation to the minister, BEKH reached out for assistance in identifying pain points, optimizing the flow, and presenting a more user-friendly solution. After a comprehensive review of their work and process.
Given the complexity of the existing flow, I decided to take a deep dive into its structure and analyze it in detail. I collaborated with the team to better understand their process, the logic behind the current setup, and the user feedback they had received. The process was broken down into three steps: explanations, Form 1, and Form 2, with certain sections being voluntary or tailored to specific businesses. However, the issue was that users had to sift through an overwhelming amount of information and text just to figure out how to participate and complete the forms. This caused frustration, boredom, and ultimately, abandonment of the process before completion.
I leveraged these insights to develop a strategy that focused on simplifying, gamifying, and redesigning the flow to make it more user-friendly and intuitive. To ensure alignment with the team and stakeholders, I created multiple low-fidelity wireframes to communicate ideas and refine the direction. This collaborative process resulted in a simplified, guided, visually engaging prototype that reduced friction and improved usability. The redesigned flow was set to undergo further testing with users and stakeholders to gather additional feedback and ensure its effectiveness.
New - My work
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive upon presenting the early prototype during their public presentation to the Minister of Small Business and stakeholders. The prototype was praised for its intuitive design and user-centric approach, and it was officially adopted as the foundation for the redesign process. This milestone marked a strong starting point for refining and aligning the intake process with the organization’s goals.
As this was only a consultation covering a few sections before their public presentation, I was involved in limited ideation sessions to provide input on the issues and create mockups of possible solutions. If I had the opportunity, I would have liked to be more involved in additional ideation sessions and delve deeper into the process of redesigning the registration flow, perhaps even contributing to a full website redesign.