FreelancerDEX

Building a decentralised freelance marketplace
Market Opportunity
Create one of the first decentralised freelance marketplaces for the growing gig economy, leveraging our talent pool with smart contract infrastructure.
Objectives & Goals
Build an MVP of a fully decentralised freelancing marketplace
Reduce friction and provide optimal UX as we transform a Web2 experience to Web3
Business Challenges
No reference for decentralised UX in this domain
Using smart contract infrastructure and operating without a backend
Collaborating with external infrastructure, constantly updating and evolving
Product Users
Hirers - Mostly Web3 startups
Web3 freelancers - Mostly Developers

The Project

With a market opportunity to develop a SaaS product, we began an iterative process alongside two 2 clients to build an embedded white label SaaS version of our product on their own website.

The Target Audience

Leaders of Web3 ecosystems, the companies within their ecosystems (mostly early-stage startups), and the talent that they would attract (mostly developers).

The Goal

To re-create the experience and benefits of the HireVibes app via a branded iFrame embedded into a client's website.

My Role

Sole designer producing prototypes and first point of contact for testing with clients and gathering feedback on features. Worked alongside dev team & product manager.

The Impact

44% increase in talent pool during updates and a 3.4X increase, 6 months after launch.
Competitive Benchmarking
Since we were building one of the first truly decentralised freelancing apps, it was not possible to find a direct competitor at this time. However, we were aiming to merge Web3 tech with the existing model of Web2 freelancing platforms, so we looked at similar product experiences related to both of these to see what issues or opportunities existed.
User Flows
Decentralised identites functioned via on-chain soulbound NFTs. We knew from research, that each user type requires a very different experience. Without a backend system, we needed to update the smart contract infrastructure to include different user roles. Once completed, we were able to map the user flows.
We began to identify the main flows that were crucial for a full freelancing flow. Since a Web3 freelancing platform was a new concept we wanted to build just enough to allow us to test the core features and gather feedback.
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1. Sign up flow - A user needed to mint their NFT ID to be able to partake in decentralised freelancing.
2. Post a job - We would need to allow hirers to post jobs
3. Create a Proposal - We would need to allow freelancers to create a proposal to work on jobs
4. Accept Proposal / Pay & Release Escrow - Hirers would accept or reject proposals, enter the fee into an escrow and be able to release it at a later date
5. Share Review - Once the job is completed, users can leave reviews to build each others decentralised identity.
Designs
I created the main home screen, all jobs and all freelancers screens to begin the design patterns and components. Then we began to design the main features and flows that we had identified as necessary for a functioning marketplace.
1. Signup
The signup flow required a disclaimer, due to potential risk and dispute resolutions. The user then needed to login, and mint their soulbound NFT with a unique handle to proceed.
2. Post a Job
The post a job flow was standard for such a site, however, we reduced the amount of data entered in an order to reduce the cost of storing data on-chain.
3. Create a Proposal
We allow freelancers to apply for jobs by creating a proposal. Proposals are stored on-chain so this incurs a cost to the freelancer, however this fee is quite small and in turn can help to prevent scamming of job posts which is of value to the hirer and increases the merit of the proposal.
4. Accept a Proposal / Pay Escrow
Hirers decide which proposal to accept, and make their payment to confirm which is held in the escrow smart contract and the job page is updated.
5. Release Escrow / Share Review
When work has been completed, another on-chain transaction allows the funds to be released from the smart contract to the freelancers wallet address (the same one that holds the souldbound NFT). The hirer can then share an on-chain review, that will become part of the freelancers decentralised identity.
Website
We designed a one-page marketing website, to share information about what we were building, and decentralised freelancing in general. This allowed us to engage potential users, inform them and invite them to join our whitelist for testing the live app when it launches.

The Impact

During the weeks in which we were making the changes, Stacks reported that the talent pool went from 191 members to 275 members. Although this meant an increase of 44%, the user base and pool were still quite small overall.

6 months later, the talent pool reached 935 members, meaning a 3.4X increase. This is only made more significant as the crypto industry was going through a significant bear market at this time.

44%

increase during updates

3.4 X

increase 6 months later

Conclusion

In working with blockchain ecosystems, we will be able to refine our understanding of how they are using our platform and how ecosystems like these are hiring.
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By powering the profiles on our backend, the scaling of the client's ecosystem in turn increases our database of talent and jobs. Improving this product and onboarding more ecosystems can exponentially grow our core product as well as revenue.
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As we continue to gather feedback from clients, some potential updates in our roadmap include:

  • Enable referrals via the client's embed page
  • Add more customisable features, eg. inherit font and other design elements from the client's website page
  • Integrations such as Zapier can allow ecosystems to tap into their current workflow. Auto-posting new jobs to ecosystem Discord or Slack channels etc.

You can see the HireVibes Talent Portal live at: www.stacks.co/jobs

Updating jobseeker list to improve talent searching process

Overview

Living in Las Palmas and being a member of the public bike rental scheme "Sitycleta" for 7 months, provided me with lots of experiences of the highs and lows of using the public bike systems. With a variety of issues experienced throughout the entire user journey, I wanted to highlight and iterate on the one area that I thought could have the most impact on the overall cohesion of the system.

Scope & Constraints

Living

Research

Being

Design

Being

Validation

Being

Outcomes & Results

Being

Lessons Learned / Future Iterations

Being a foreigner in Las Palmas, my experience may be quite different to locals who equal over 90% of the population. My network is distributed heavier towards English speakers, so of the people I spoke to during my research, many were also foreigners. This is of course, not an accurate representation of the largest sector of users, and I feel this would negatively impact the validity of my results.

Implementing Smart Contract functionality into the HireVibes app

Overview

Living in Las Palmas and being a member of the public bike rental scheme "Sitycleta" for 7 months, provided me with lots of experiences of the highs and lows of using the public bike systems. With a variety of issues experienced throughout the entire user journey, I wanted to highlight and iterate on the one area that I thought could have the most impact on the overall cohesion of the system.

Scope & Constraints

Living

Research

Being

Design

Being

Validation

Being

Outcomes & Results

Being

Lessons Learned / Future Iterations

Being a foreigner in Las Palmas, my experience may be quite different to locals who equal over 90% of the population. My network is distributed heavier towards English speakers, so of the people I spoke to during my research, many were also foreigners. This is of course, not an accurate representation of the largest sector of users, and I feel this would negatively impact the validity of my results.

Building ATS integrations into the HireVibes app

Overview

Living in Las Palmas and being a member of the public bike rental scheme "Sitycleta" for 7 months, provided me with lots of experiences of the highs and lows of using the public bike systems. With a variety of issues experienced throughout the entire user journey, I wanted to highlight and iterate on the one area that I thought could have the most impact on the overall cohesion of the system.

Scope & Constraints

Living

Research

Being

Design

Being

Validation

Being

Outcomes & Results

Being

Lessons Learned / Future Iterations

Being a foreigner in Las Palmas, my experience may be quite different to locals who equal over 90% of the population. My network is distributed heavier towards English speakers, so of the people I spoke to during my research, many were also foreigners. This is of course, not an accurate representation of the largest sector of users, and I feel this would negatively impact the validity of my results.

Thanks for reading!

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