BE.conomy

Building a better economy through Barter Exchange.

This project is a continuation of concept work done in the design research phase. You can read more about that here.

 

Team

Michelle Ammirati
Erin Lee Carman

Methods
Workshop facilitation
Expert interviews
Secondary research
Prototyping
Functionality matrix
Roadmapping

Role

Interviewer
Facilitator
Prototype facilitator
Video Editor

The Problem

  • Solving for a lack of economic resilience for businesses and freelancers

  • Addressing freelancer’s needs to build experience and present quality work samples, as well as business’ needs to save time and money

  • Increasing both business’s and freelancers’ access to the resources they need to address the problems they’re facing in an economic system does not favor them.

Our Solution

Be.conomy is a platform that formalizes bartering of skills and services between small businesses and freelancers.

Process

Picking up where we left off with the initial research for Be.conomy, we tested our concept in two workshops with different audiences. The first workshop was a C2C audience that ran for one hour with six participants and two activities. The second workshop tested a B2B audience with 4 business owners. We wanted to learn what things can create value and be exchanged, how we create trust and would participants use a platform like this?

The most important insights from the C2C workshop were that:

  • Services and skills, specifically professional, were deemed more valuable for exchange

  • Users felt that they could agree upon something together and work out how long the transaction would last together until each task was complete

  • People had to determine a unit of measure before proceeding

  • Excitement for concept, particularly around helping during unemployment

The most important insights from the B2B workshop were that:

  • Business owners wanted help with things they hate

  • Have a question of quality and want to vet people

  • Think that transactions for the business market extend to the business and its products as well as the business owner’s personal skills

  • Determining equality can be based on a hourly rate, financial or sentimental value

C2C workshop services

B2B workshop pairing

We also tested our concept using a storyboard with a web developer, 2 sociologists, an educator who is also an expert in sharing economies, and a certified public accountant. From them we learned:

  • We needed to map functionalities for different audiences and audience interactions

  • We needed to choose a more specific audience: C2C, B2B, B2C?

  • We needed to determine how to account for not being able to match trades perfectly

  • We also needed to learn more about liabilities associated with a platform like this and how to mitigate risk.

Based on the learnings from our concept testing and a landscape analysis of direct and indirect competitors, we saw a gap in the B2C market and seeing opportunity there, we chose to focus our platform on exchanges between businesses and individuals. Our research around the pandemic and unemployment made us think that a good individual audience may be people in various forms of career transition: students, people re-entering the workforce, people shifting industries and people in need of experience. Based on feedback that people may not want to make one to one trades and that it may be difficult to find matches to complete transactions, we developed our marketplace function (pictured below), which allows users to earn BE.coins and spend them on difference services and skills in a market rather than requiring them to make a direct trade with a business.

Prototyping

Process storyboard to test clarity of user journeys

During this process we created a functionality matrix of all the capabilities we would want in the platform. We decided which parts of the platform were most essential to test and created three different tests to address each part. We set up two tests between small business owners and freelancers where they engaged in a transaction over zoom as if the conferencing platform was BE.conomy to determine:

  • the best avenue/channel for an exchange

  • if the platform works for conversation-based transactions

  • how to track a transaction over a period of time

  • And how to show freelancer quality

We also tested the clarity of the user journeys for both businesses and freelancers through a storyboard. Next, we tested profile screens to determine which sections are necessary and helpful for platform users to learn about each other.

Learnings and Next Steps

We learned so many things from prototyping, but the most impactful to our functionality and value proposition include:

  • Audio/video options to connect will be essential to the exchange. No other freelancer platforms offer this functionality, but audio is easier than chat and saves everyone time.

  • Freelancers often repeat the same conversations and would prefer to filter out people who their services do not apply to. We can help by providing a form with basic information that would allow freelancers to reject business inquiries that are not relevant to their skills.

  • For many prototype testers, the buy-in for freelancers was not clear to them since many freelancers are strapped for cash.

  • Some transactions where businesses would need a freelancer to re-create a product, like a recipe, would require someone to spend money. We can incorporate a venmo capability into our platform for occasions like this to track any money spent outside of our platform to complete a transaction.

  • Scope of projects will vary and depending on the scale, milestones will be necessary for check in, as well as BE.coin payment.

During the prototyping stage of the project we developed a roadmap based on our ever-changing functionality matrix. We determined that launching BE.conomy would take at least a year from the prototyping stage. We still needed to further pinpoint freelancer buy-in and who makes up ‘freelancers’. Is the focus on the side hustle? Experience building? Expertise or mentorship? Or could it be incentives for freelancers like offering health insurance benefits through our platform? Do we need to be more specific about freelancers or is this general group of career transition the right audience? The Roadmap includes month to month timelines that highlight the planning, building, beta testing and launching stages as well as what is needed in the first year to maintain the business. We would measure success in three ways:

  • Is trading is active and happening both 1 to 1 and multilaterally through our market since we know that bartering platforms have existed before and still do, but trades are minimal and the platforms are not necessarily active?

  • Do freelancers feel like they have power and control in their ability to take on jobs and charge what they believe they are worth rather than lowering their rate just to be hired? We can monitor this by looking at increases and decreases in rates as well as how often freelancers accept and reject business proposals.

  • Can the platform generate revenue to keep running the company and expand?

How It Works

Watch our video that describes the next iteration of BE.conomy, which can flip the power dynamic for freelancers in the market while also building resilience for businesses. Investing in BE.conomy, whether as a financial investor, a platform user or a platform builder, can help create a better economy through barter exchanges.