Client Billing App

A payment collecting app that helps freelancers stabilize self-employed careers.

OVERVIEW

This project aims to solve the ongoing frustration among freelancers, which attempts to offer them a more easing payment collecting solution and get them a more stable income stream.

MY ROLE & DURATION

UX & Visual Designer

User research, Visual design, Prototyping, Usability testing

Oct - Dec 2023 (2 months)

My Observations and Hypothesis

Inconsistency in payments may discourage many freelance creatives from pursuing an independent career.

Freelancers often find themselves tangled up in managing several clients at a time, which adds many extra hours to their current creative workload.

Without a more systematic approach, they won’t be able separate themselves from this managerial burden and dedicate themselves fully to what they do best: creativity.

Discovery Research

3-DAY WORKSHOP

Research participants: social influencers, freelancers.

TOPICS COVERED:

Understand roles and responsibilities shared between freelancers and clients
Daily tasks freelancers have
How freelancers measure their success

User Interviews

In preliminary stages, quantitative research has yielded the impact of the late payment issue, as well as the terribly high dissatisfaction rate from using current invoicing tools. Qualitative interviews are conducted during this stage to understand freelancers’ key areas of challenge, as well as find out how they think a good invoicing app can help them deal with their pain points.

"I have to juggle between Gmail and Excel to keep track of all the client communication and payment progress, which stresses me out sometimes, especially when I must work on multiple projects at the same time."

Freelance photographer

"It gets complicated when I’m in the middle of a project and the client wants an additional service. I mean extra income is great, but sometimes I lose track of all those miscellaneous invoices and spend hours more on having them organized."

Freelance web designer

"Most of my clients are decent returning customers, still I would feel a bit more secure if I always kept them accountable with a work contract, which takes extra effort."

Social influencer

Insights

After conducting similar interviews and analyzing gathered data, 3 common themes emerged as key user challenges:

INFORMATION SILOS

Exchanged information between freelancers & clients are usually scattered among platforms & tools
Only 40% of freelancers use invoicing tools
Huge opportunity to enhance communication satisfaction for freelancers

Extra invoices might show up not at a timely manner
Misunderstanding happens, and clients tend to ask for extra delivery at the cost of additional payments
Clients do not always know what they want until they’re in the middle of the project

Some clients ghost freelancers and evade payments after delivery
Freelancers want to be on the safe side, but getting clients into a contractual relation is tedious and challenging
Clients often have the upper hand in negotiating working terms due to a huge supply of affordable freelance creatives

FLEXIBILITY

SECURITY

User Profiles

Whether they’re freelancers web designers or Instagram influencers, they share common tasks & goals when dealing with project delivery & payment matters:

USER TASKS:

Understand client requests & do research
Iterate and set up feedback calls
Deliver final work

USER GOALS:

Have one source of truth that helps you easily keep track of all payment records
An advanced feature that helps you upsell with little or no extra transactional hassle
A peace of mind that ensures your good work is rewarded with timely payments

Conceptualization

Based on insights & user profiles, I developed low-fi concepts that adopt the 3 main use cases. A low-fi mockup was also created for initial usability testing. This helps inform further design adjustments before digitalizing ideas.

The Solution

3Step billing app makes it easier for freelance creatives to establish a freelance agreement, request new payments, and handle ongoing payments.

Dashboard for Multitasking

Fresh users can quickly learn how to bill a client by watching the 15s tutorial.

Easily draft & send a freelance contract by tapping the round button. Quickly send an invoice to clients who are "ready-to-bill", and remind other clients to pay when some invoices are approaching due dates.

Freelance Contract Form

All users need to do is find the desired client, add billing items, adjust time & date of contract, preview, and send the contract.

Invoice Configuration

The "add item" feature is introduced at the billing step to help users configure billing details & upsell their customers, .

Within a few extra taps, users already have an updated & desired invoice.

Flexible Invoice Views

"Due date" tells users which payments are due soon & which are more urgent in terms of expiration date. "Billing amount" helps users take care of bigger bills, which are also due soon.

Usability Testing

The app is tested at various project stages to ensure the credibility of the final concept.

Lo-fidelity prototypes were tested weekly to get feedback on the functionality, content, and interactivity of the app
Unmoderated User testing - voluntary groups were motivated to use the high-fidelity prototype. All participants were using the app to carry out hypothetical tasks that fulfill the main use cases

Seeing Results

These initial results were collected to inform further design modifications. The beta version of the app is currently under development.

77%

82%

Adoption rate

Task completion

Project Learnings

Regular testing adds clarity and helps save resources.

It is my intuition that tells me a design does not look finished, but sometimes I don't know exactly why. Conducting user testing regularly provides me hints on how to continue iterating, and pushes the concept to that final look & feel.