Background & goal

Start Closing is a platform (YC16) that helps contractors close more projects by allowing them to move leads through the application by utilizing stages on any given project. There are four stages that a project can have: prospect, under contract, in production, and billing. These stages require different information to be associated with a project. For instance a project with a stage of under contract, needs a signed contract associated with it in order for the project to move into the stage "In Production."

The goal for the platform is that it will aid contractors in closing more leads and in turn will help them connect with more customers while returning a higher profit.

Process

There was an MVP that allowed us to figure out what assumptions we initially made were correct, incorrect and irrelevant. The MVP lacked a consistent, well defined interface that would help create a consistent experience across the board.

We started with some phone conversations with users to hear how they typically use the application and where they get confused (and what they don't like about it). We gained some valuable insight into our naming conventions and current user experience that wasn't apparent previously.

We then took a look at the interface and noticed some problems with the visual hierarchy as well as some aesthetic issues – some of which are included under the “problems” section above.

Since the product team was a team of two others, we worked really closely with each other in order to ensure we were all on the same page and making the right calls together. We tried to keep to an agile process as much as possible; however, there were times when we lacked process and substituted conversations when necessary as process sometimes became a barrier that blocked us.