Designing a tool to support the growth of small businesses

To begin, we had to understand the skills and knowledge gaps of small businesses at different stages of the business lifecycle. Through conversations with local governments, small business advisors and a statewide survey that collected over 1000 responses, we began to understand these skill and knowledge gaps, as well as capture how businesses preferred to learn online.

Literature and case studies around online learning, digital engagement and peer to peer learning all began to inform and shape opportunity areas for design direction. Paired with our research on the ground, we formed recommendations that the design direction needed to allow learning to happen at anytime, provide tailored content, facilitate face to face interactions and promote positive behaviour change.

Working with a behavioural psychologist placed an insightful and interesting lens on the project. There would be no use having all the learning material available online if businesses still didn’t see the value in engaging with it. Hence, we explored what features would drive engagement and behavioural change such as promoting self-efficacy (social cognitive theory), which is the innate ability to achieve goals by presenting users with easy to accomplish tasks and information.

Desktop research, paired with qualitative and quantitative research methods catalysed our design hypothesis: An online platform enabling users to learn new skills, connect with other businesses, and plan and track their progress to increase the success of their small business. 

We summarised and presented our findings to Small Business Victoria and evidence-based recommendations for the online learning platform. Our team identified four key areas and opportunities to support small businesses in their growth and uplifting their capability.

1. Digital engagement: Across the planning and starting phases of their business they have little time to learn new skills and source information. Create a platform that provides them access to targeted information and learning materials in an accessible and efficient format.
   
2. Online learning: Business planning is important during the start-up stage of a business life cycle, but businesses often forget to revisit and update these plans as time goes by. This can lead to a lack of agility and stability if a business landscape or market suddenly shifts. Create a tool that will take the information from their business profiles and continually learn from their activity within the platform, to create tailored experiences that present them with content that is relevant to their sector, region, and stage of the business life cycle.
   
3. Peer to peer: 52% of small business owners responding to the research survey said that they currently go to other small business owners for advice.  A successful online learning platform for small businesses will need to build learning communities and enable the transfer of knowledge and resources between users.  
   
4. Behavioural change: Small businesses may have a variety of blockers that inhibit their planning, capability building and learning. Create a platform that promotes behavioural change by setting social norms, promotes self-efficacy, cultivates a mindset of resilience, makes planning and monitoring enjoyable and supports small business owners with building a plan for their future.

We designed, user tested and refined prototypes which explored a prototype for the new digital platform and business planning tool which visualised how small business owners could:

• Plan: Set a vision for success and the goals to get there
• Track and respond: Track progress against goals and respond to changes
• Learn and connect: Find opportunities to improve capabilities, formally and informally

Small Business Victoria then worked with Portable again in 2020 to further validate the proof of concept design and explore the possibility of building the application. Small Business Victoria also wanted to consider how it could best support small businesses who were recovering from the bushfire crisis and those impacted by the evolving COVID-19 context. Key findings revealed that many small businesses were now in survival mode and that businesses were, now more than ever, in need of clear and tailored support from trustworthy sources.

The research taken in 2020 to update and refine the business planning tool prototype helped inform and define priority features and user stories for the business planning tool and updates to the proof of concept design, such as:

• “As a small business owner, I want help setting realistic goals, so that I can see progress and build confidence.”
• “As a small business owner, I want information from a trusted source in simple language, so I can confidently make decisions.”

To ensure that the Business Planning Tool was ready for MVP development, our Experience Design team updated the 2018 proof of concept designs and further iterated on these to create a comprehensive visual design system detailing user flows and visualising the components and layout of key features, including headlines and what key screens would look like in the platform such as the user dashboard, support groups area and the flow for new users setting up a profile.

Our Technology team is experienced in undertaking current state analysis of the technical ecosystems of our clients and then providing assessments of a technical solution design that will conform to best practice principles of Performance, Reliability, Availability and Scalability. Through an assessment of the prioritised features for the MVP and identified content types, we were able to produce Small Business Victoria with clear technical documentation and guidance on the proposed technical architecture for the business planning tool accompanied by a series of solution diagrams to guide development partners. 

As part of this, we identified the need for a range of content and user APIs to assist in pulling content from other parts of the Small Business Victoria technical ecosystem to pass through to the front end of the web application and bring across user generated content and user profile information, as well as recommendations on user management and authentication processes.

Portable supported Small Business Victoria and their development partners, Today on the successful build and launch of the tool, providing advisory and support in the areas of Research and strategy, Design and technical implementation. We worked them to further validate and refine the minimum viable product, priority features and the further development of the journey a business takes to set a goal and track their progress against these goals in an engaging and interactive way. 

The Business Planning Tool will continue to grow and evolve over time as it supports small business owners across Victoria to plan, track and learn how to best succeed in growing and sustaining their business.