To comply with my confidentiality agreement I have omitted and appropriated confidential information. The information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Excelar Technology and the BC Tech Association. The designs are a reinterpretation of the original.
BCTechBase is an interactive database of over 3,000 companies and investors from across the province of British Columbia. It integrates all public information related to the local technology industry into a single platform, providing key data insights.
It was created to showcase the progress of local tech companies and improve their ability to attract global capital and talent. By bringing together the BC Tech community to share data openly, the BC Tech Association aims to help startups grow into anchor companies and amplify the BC tech community's profile globally.
UX Consultant, UI Designer
CEO, Project Manager, Development Team
I worked collaboratively with a small Agile team at Excelar Technologies, which included a Product Owner, Project Manager, and Developers. In my role as a UX consultant and UI Designer, I provided all the deliverables for the first phase of this project.
One of the significant challenges in data analytics is the organization and maintenance of accurate and up-to-date datasets. The BC Tech Association, with its extensive membership ranging from start-ups to tech giants, faces this challenge with its abundance of datasets. However, these datasets often suffer from fragmentation, conflicts, outdated information, or different storage formats. In fact, the BC Tech Ecosystem boasts over 11,000 tech companies and 250,000 employees in BC alone. Recognizing the vast scale of this ecosystem, the association acknowledged the necessity of a channel to consolidate and interpret these datasets, providing valuable information for the technology community to leverage.
Collected data and insights are only valuable if they are easily accessible. The tech association requires a solution that enables the community to browse, search, and filter information, data, or insights quickly and effortlessly, ensuring they can find what they need with ease.
This project was divided into 2 phrases. Given approximately two months to complete the first phase, my task was to deliver a high-fidelity mockup within a two-week timeframe. As this was a freelance project I undertook alongside my full-time job, the tight timeline required me to ensure the user experience was spot-on from the beginning. Before diving into the design process, it was crucial to identify the users and understand their needs.
The BC Tech Association needs a solution to transform scattered datasets into meaningful insights that can inform the local tech community and promote the community globally.
While the BC Tech Association can provide member datasets, how can they become meaningful information? Our team approached the local tech community for answers. We gathered feedback by talking directly to companies, from start-ups and mid-sizes to tech giants. We also talked to investors, tech talents, service providers, and policy-makers.
The results we gathered from the community allowed us to identify the users and their goals for using the platform.
BC has cultivated one of the most thriving tech startup communities in the world. To realize the full potential as a truly competitive top ten player, the community needs data and insights to guide them – to track the progress of companies, attract global capital and talent, and benchmark versus other leading companies and ecosystems. By bringing together the BC Tech community to share data openly, we can raise the game of the companies and amplify the community's profile globally.
With the users and goals set, we outlined the features necessary to be included in the platform. Due to a tight deadline, the 1st phrase of the project would only focus on Dashboard, Directory and Profiles.
See aggregate high-level trends of companies including: top BC companies, recent financings and acquisitions, and average revenue and employee growth.
Search for companies and people, and apply filters to find exactly what and who you are looking for.
View the profiles of companies, people and investors to connect to. Search employees, social media links to easily connect.
Pull a range of insightful reports including employee size, revenue range, financings, sector, and age.
A place to help users connect with tech professionals by facilitating mentorship. Users can filter their mentor search to find the most suitable mentor and connect via the provided LinkedIn contact.
Continuous funding is necessary for ongoing maintenance, support, and developing new features. BC Tech members can subscribe to a premium service offering exclusive features.
The available datasets on their own were scattered and fragmented. I employed a top-down approach with the team, focusing on classifying the data into categories and subcategories to establish a hierarchy.
I then proceeded to map the data into potential tables, charts, and graphs to assess whether they would offer valuable insights to meet user needs.
With extremely limited time, I decided to quickly explore different layouts suitable for a data-intensive platform on a whiteboard with the team. We mainly focused on the Dashboard and Directory features to get started.
I then transformed the concept into a low-fidelity interactive prototype, enabling the team to demonstrate user scenarios and gather feedback and approval from the product owner early on in the project. At the same time, the team can promptly initiate usability testing.
During usability testing with the product owner and future end-users, I discovered that information sometimes becomes overloaded, congested, and difficult to locate.
To address this issue, I explored alternative ways to organize and group information. For instance, as information is pulled from different sources through APIs, its length can vary significantly. In response, I proposed implementing a word count check to limit the display of excessively long non-essential information, unless the user specifically requests more details by clicking the "Show More" link. This approach would optimize screen space by prioritizing important information and reduce the cognitive load on users when they are searching for specific information.
Due to time constraints, we engaged in several rounds of rapid iterations. Following this, I proceeded to develop high-fidelity mockups while our developers simultaneously worked on building the prototype. Any additional issues identified during usability testing were documented in the product backlog and scheduled for later revisit based on prioritization.
I designed detailed high-fidelity mockups with specs for typography, colors, icons, and element styling. Additionally, I created a component library for easy implementation by developers in the prototype. These mockups were essential for presenting the work to the client while the developers built the prototype.
For prototyping, I focused on working collaboratively with our developers to consistently review and provide suggestions, to ensure it was on par with the expectations that had been set with earlier concepts presented to the client previously.
The BCTechBase opened up a number of possibilities for the local tech industry. The BC Tech Association now has a tool to refer to when its members are looking for specific information. Companies and investors can benchmark against one another and help source investment opportunities. Talented individuals can search and explore local tech companies and possibly connect with professionals through mentorships.
Building BCTechBase also laid a solid foundation for subsequent projects like TECNABase and AZTechBase. These projects extended the original project and were constructed upon the BCTechBase framework. Their goal was to introduce the platform to other provinces or states in North America, and potentially expand its reach to other parts of the world.
