I've seen my fair share of early-stage startups, and let me tell you, it's no walk in the park. We wear multiple hats, hustle with limited resources, and push deadlines on a daily basis. But when that spark of an idea transforms into a real product? Pure magic.
In this high-pressure world, communication is king. Everyone needs to be in sync, which can be tough with a small team. That's why open channels are crucial – ideas and feedback need to flow freely.
Tracking progress and hitting goals? Essential, yet surprisingly tricky. Even with fancy project management tools like slack, visualizing deadlines and celebrating milestones can be a struggle.
Marsbase is a web app that helps team members create project roadmaps, deadlines, and individual tasks, while giving users the ability to communicate via chat or video, all directly on the platform.
Come see how I designed it.
I talked to 4 startups to understand small team struggles. Simple questions, quick answers meant I could dive deeper fast.
Talking to teams, I learned a surprising thing: micromanaging isn't always a bad word. For small teams, it can build trust and keep everyone accountable. I wanted to harness this idea for a tool that boosts teamwork. So, I built something where members can see each other's work live and give feedback—always in sync, always responsible.
“Secondary data by MIT Sloan proves that small teams operate at a higher frequency”
Small teams rule! A study showed they work quicker, take risks, and make cooler stuff. They're like tiny brainstorms on wheels, all focused on the same goal. Remember WhatsApp? 32 engineers built it, and Facebook loved it so much they paid $19 billion! Same with the Volkswagen Golf GTI – eight people made that hot hatch legend.
So, what does this mean for startups? Before diving in, they gotta figure out how to work together like those dream teams. My job is to understand their struggles and solutions, then see how they actually behave when things get busy.
Startups need just the right project tools: not too bulky, not too bare. We want to solve this with a powerful, affordable freemium plan.
To design the perfect plan, we mapped how startups choose tools. Turns out, features matter most. So, we'll pack our freemium plan with features that give startups the strength they need to thrive.
Next stop: sketching out the features that will make our teams unstoppable!
Teams often rush into choosing project management tools, like Slack, without considering other options. To avoid this, I created a customer journey map to understand how users make decisions. This helped me design a tool that better meets their needs.
Tiny Teams (3-4 people):
By keeping it broad, you cover a larger "small company" audience, increasing potential customers and chances of success. This format highlights the core needs and bonus desires for each user case, making it easier to understand and remember.
I ranked my "How might we" questions based on how much they would impact the project's success. I used the problems that my interviewees mentioned during the empathy stage of the design thinking process to identify the exact problems that teams were facing with prior project management tools.
I dug through research, then boiled it down to the core idea. This helped me see what users need, pick the best features, and build a perfect layout for them.
I started designing the information architecture by focusing on two main things: Onboarding users effectively, making sure they understand how to use the tool and what they can do with it, and walking users through the PM tool before they use it, providing them with a tour of the tool and explaining its features. I also created other IA for the micro flows in between screens, such as error, success states, and disclaimer pop-ups. For now, I'm focusing on the broad user flows to provide an overview of the design thinking process. Later, I will discuss ways that I derived into certain design decisions.
Making a timeline showed me the whole user journey, like a clear map. I realized each project on the roadmap needs its own plan, deadlines, and people in charge. But teammates like getting things done, not filling out task cards. So, I designed a quick "add a task" feature with all the needed info right there. One simple page, job done!
I like to start designing with rough sketches, so I can try out different ideas fast. This helps me see what works and get feedback from users early on.
When mapping out projects, teams often add tasks to people's plates. To make things easier, I built a way to add more tasks right after one another, without jumping back and forth. It's like a continuous flow, so users can quickly build their project roadmaps.
People are used to logging in a certain way, so it's best not to surprise them with something totally new. Instead of trying to change the whole login game, I focused on two designs that people already know and love.
The first design is the classic username and password combo. It's like the old reliable friend of login forms. The second design is the social media login button, which lets people use their existing accounts to get right in. Easy peasy.
The first design received 6 votes. Some of the concerns were that it felt forced and did not have a brand identity. Additionally, some people were used to seeing log-in information on the right. After choosing the second log-in style, I began with a simple onboarding process that emulates that of Slack or Jira.
When we asked our interviewees about their visual idea for Marsbase, we received a common answer: Dark mode. They believe that Marsbase should give away the feeling of being in outer space. The 4 step process is the easiest way to convert users without any constraints like paywalls. We figured that if we can emulate Slack's onboarding process, we can familiarize users with the same habit loop.
To help team members understand the problem they are trying to solve and its stakeholders, the main dashboard asks them several questions before they can access the rest of the features. These questions help the team to define the problem, identify the stakeholders, and understand the context in which the problem is being solved.
Teams often assign a variety of tasks to specific team members each quarter. To allow for more tasks to be assigned for a given feature, I made sure that users can add another task within the same flow before completing the timeline creation process.
Teams that aren't used to following a roadmap have the option to switch the style to a "board." This allows teams to drag cards around, and select the ones that are worth prioritizing over the other. For the sake of the case study, static pages are being shown to express the usability of the product, rather than the interaction.
To keep things organized and easy to find, all the files shared in a roadmap are now hanging out together in the Files tab, right up top where you'd expect them. This is a big deal because most teams have to bounce back and forth between their email and project management tool to track down what they need. Now, everything's in one place, even in the free version. That means less time searching, and more time getting stuff done.
Unlike a Gantt chart, this roadmap design makes it easier to see things from a linear perspective. However; we did not discount the idea of creating a gantt chart for the paid model. For now; we created a simple roadmap journey for small teams of 10 members or less.
Zoom, Google Duo, WebEx are just some of the many platforms that teams decide to use. Now "Meetings" at marsbase enables similar features directly in the project management platform. Now, teams can communicate more effectively while having the product roadmap laid out for them on the same screen.
We made this decision by asking teams what main platforms they use in order for us to integrate them into an "All-in-one" solution. Out of many tools, video chat was among the many. It made sense to add this feature to the list of freemium tools.
A place to chat with each-other is another feature that showed up in interviews. According to our customer journey map, a majority of our stakeholders were searching for a tool where they can view roadmaps, chat and view progress all within one solution. Chatspace enables the same communication capabilities as slack but is much simpler (minus the slackbots).
Team Progress Calls For Celebration.
On the freemium version. Stakeholders asked if there is a possible way to add a report that shows several variables like status, timeline cycle, and average cycle, among many others. After creating a card sort among 5 participants, we derived to 4.
UX Design specifications
Design System/Guidelines
UI Copy
UX Research
Developer Hand-off material
Asset hand off
Teams enjoyed the simplicity of Marsbase used on small scale projects. They encouraged the team to keep Marsbase as a SAAS for small companies in order for it to offer immediate value. The challenges we faced had to do with our ability to provide more features that users requested such as an "AI assistant." Given that the team lacks AI power, it will be difficult to fulfill this promise to users. The UX Design received a 90% satisfaction rate, and 90% of beta users say they feel comfortable using the platform on a daily basis. 60% say Marsbase lacks advanced capabilities, and 80% say they hope to see a Zapier integration.
Thank you for reading.
