SaaS Cloud Platform
App Market

My Role
- Interview
- User Story & IA design
- UX design
- Design System
- Aligning PM, Engineers, Sales Team, and Marketing teams
Tools
- Figma
- Figjam
- Microsoft Azure
Team
1 UX/UI Designer
1 Product Owner
8 Devs
1 SA
Project Timeline
Apr-Oct 31 2021 (6 months)
My Story with App Market
I was a UX Designer at WiAdvance Technology, where the WiAdvance App Market was one of the most important products in 2021-2022. According to our business strategy, our team aimed to build a marketplace to allow our Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partners to publish software.
As the Sole UX/UI Designer, I interviewed stakeholders, including ISVs, SMBs, and our Admin users. I worked with Alex (Lead Front-end Engineer), Parts (System Architecture) and Janice (Product Owner) to build the SaaS Marketplace.
Research
I interviewed 16 ISV’s managers and 9 SMBs users to understand our customers’ pain points, wants and needs.
User Group 1
Independent Software Vendors (ISV) Managers
Main Pain Point
- Limited Marketing Resources: ISVs, typically comprised of engineering teams, lack the marketing and sales resources to manage and promote product and/or services effectively.
Wants & Needs
- ISVs need the customer resources from WiAdvance.
- ISVs want to create recurrent revenue.
- ISVs want to have more resources marketing their software product without hiring more sales people.
User Group 2
Small & Medium Businesses (SMB) Users
Main Pain Points
- Pricing Opacity: SMBs struggle to compare business software due to undisclosed prices and services.
- Cancellation Hassles: SMBs find it difficult to cancel services they are dissatisfied with.
- IT Support Gap: Many SMBs lack IT staff for software development and maintenance.
Wants & Needs
- SMBs want to compare the prices of software before buying them.
- SMBs want the possibility of cancelling the software service if not satisfied with it.
- SMBs need to find people who can quickly solve the software issues when needed.
Learning from Mistakes
- I did not fully plan and design interview questions in advance, resulting in inconsistent data collection and making it challenging to analyze the findings afterward.
- After this experience, I learned the importance of thoroughly designing interview questions before meetings, ensuring more consistent and valuable data collection for analysis.
User Stories & IA
User Stories Writing Process
- Research and Analysis: Gather insights through interviews and competitor analysis. Use this to create detailed user stories.
- Feature Prioritization: Decide which features to include in the first phase based on importance and feasibility.
- Backlog Creation: Break down user stories into manageable tasks for team implementation on Microsoft Azure.
- Information Architecture: Organize product content and structure to align with user needs and goals.


Learning
- Collaborated with engineers to write user stories on Microsoft Azure.
- Ensured clear descriptions of user wants and needs.
- Included acceptance criteria for easy task breakdown.
Design System
I was also responsible for developing a UI components standard for the App market.
I took great care to consider the relativity of the official website, ensuring that all components fit seamlessly into the overall aesthetic. This not only helped to reinforce the company’s brand image but also ensured that the user experience was seamless and intuitive.

Hi-fi Prototype
Once the components and pages have been designed, I use Figma’s prototyping tool to generate a seamless and interactive app market experience. The tool allows me to bring the designs to life, showcasing the user flow and experience, and helping stakeholders understand how the app will work in practice.


Next Time
- Starting with Hi-fi Prototypes directly wasn’t the best approach. Beginning with Sketches and Wireframes would save more time and cost.
Outcomes
After dedicating nearly six months to this platform, the final outcome did not align with the company’s original objectives. On one hand, we often needed to alter the design based on our partners’ opinions. On the other hand, tight schedules caused engineers to leave.