Ultim Studio partnered with Ladybug as their founding design team to create a blockchain-powered freelance marketplace. During the 4-week design sprint, our team delivered a fully functional interactive prototype showcasing how blockchain technology can disrupt new industries.
Goal
Ladybug is an online marketplace where anyone can find and hire freelance talent. The team needed us to come up with a design that would allow contractors to post jobs and hire freelancers based on their onchain work history.
Challenge
The primary challenge was designing an MVP that would be easy to use by both freelancers and companies that never interacted with a blockchain before. The solution had to look like a normal marketplace but educate the user throughout the flow, in places where there was web3 terminology.
Solution
Our team delivered a prototype that was carefully tested out with users, and after 5 iterations, we understood that our goal was complete and that there was no confusion throughout the flow and everyone understood the product and performed each task very well.
Among many things, our team discovered that:
Clients wanted to make sure freelancers had the necessary experience to carry out the tasks
Freelancers wanted to make sure they will get payed for their work
Freelancers wanted a way to show they were a part of a DAO
We solved these by:
Designing a profile for freelancers where all their previous onchain jobs would be listed there
Designing an escrow feature for each job that would use a tertiary DAO in case of dispute
We created two different profiles for workers, individual contributors and DAO’s
Results
The final result helped the team secure a spot in the final 4, for a 1 month cohort in Austin, Texas.
Offered the team insights into how users were reacting to the idea on-chain escrow
Delighted users through a strong UI
Earned users' loyalty by listening and implementing direct feedback
Created a base for expanding the product through a solid design system
