Toward an Optimized User Interface and Service Flow for the Freelance Design Projects Matching Platform

• Main Authors: Su, Yu-Ting, 蘇郁庭
• Other Authors: Chen, Sheng-Chih
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5kv4jf

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 數位內容碩士學位學程 === 107 === The advantage of being a design freelancer is the flexibility of deciding when and where to work. This type of work attracts many people. With the rapid growth of gig economy, many people intake freelance jobs while having a full-time job to increase their income and experience. However, case design jobs require not only design professions, but other abilities such as project management, business contact, and communication efficiency are also important. Furthermore, while signing a contract to make sure his or her rights are protected, it is essential that he or she is able to deal with legal issues. The required abilities can be easy for full-time design freelancers, who make use of these abilities everyday. However, for full-time designers and design students, the abilities increase the threshold of intaking freelance jobs and may even contribute to an unsmooth working process. If conflicts and disputes appear between the contractor and the freelancer, it may lead to unpleasantness and loss for both sides. This study analyzed 9 well-known freelancer platforms at home and abroad through case studies to understand their service process and features, usage and trading volume, mediation methods, case management, evaluation mechanism, charging system, etc., as well as the user flow of the contractors and freelancers. Simultaneously, a literature review is conducted based on service design, user experience, interface design, design project management and other related fields, which can be properly applied in the design of this study. Based on 3 aspects from the survey, including trust level, information accessibility and communication experience, a user research on contractors and freelancers was performed with 9 participants who have experiences with project contracting and intaking. User needs and pain points were analyzed from the in-depth interview, and a questionnaire was designed according to the interview results. The questionnaire was further distributed on the Internet to find out the number and distribution of the users based on these pain points. According to these results, the real target users who are in need of the freelance platform were defined. After analysing the result of qualitative interview and quantitative questionnaire, 7 design points were proposed to improve the trust level, information accessibility and communication experience. The study aims to design an optimized service flow that provides the contractors and freelancers a platform with a complete service from mediatinging to ending a case. The concept was visualized by the service blueprint and was transformed into a site map to establish an information architecture. The mobile application is seen as a carrier for the concept. The design process includes planning the task flow, drawing wireframes according to the task flow, arranging the interface components, pages, and texts. Finally, the visual elements of the interfaces were added in accordance with the trend of the current interface design. In order to understand user satisfaction, interface usability and optimization sequence of the seven design points, a user test of the design prototype was performed with 5 participants. The think out loud method was adopted during the process, while a short interview and a post-test-questionnaire were conducted afterwards. To sum up, the results of this study are as follows:  （1）Through the user need research, it was observed that contractors and freelancers have problems with establishing mutual trust, understanding the related information and experiencing the communication between each other during the process of contracting and intaking. However, in the case studies, the problems can not yet be solved by the existing freelance platforms.（2）Design a service flow that meets the user’s need. Consider mobile application as a carrier and design an interface that catch up with the current trend.（3）After evaluating the design prototype of the mobile phone application in this study, it was found that the participants were generally satisfied with the 7 design points, which can enhance the degree of trust, information accessibility and communication experience. In addition, the usability of its function and interface have met the standard.