Celeri
Makes everyday a payday
Providing financial control for young adults through daily pay
My contributions
Role
UX/UI designer
UX lead
Responsibilities
Overall UX team
Delegating UX tasks throughout the team
Design system
Wire framing
Prototyping
Daily Scrum meeting
Project type
UX design
Development
Duration
Jan. 4 - Mar. 24 2024
Design tool
Figma
Celeri
Celeri is a startup dedicated to empowering users with enhanced financial control and reduced stress through daily pay solutions.
This digital solution aims for a subscription plan to give young adults daily pay in advance by a credit provided by Celeri.
I was hired for a full time internship at Celeri with a couple of other UX interns. Since the startup did not have any excisting UX designer, and by the fact of me working fulltime, I was appointed to be the UX lead.
During my time at Celeri i gained experience into working closely with brand market and communicators, front-/back end developers and stakeholders. My responsibility as the UX lead, gave me experience into delegating, and keeping an overview of each moving part aswell as my UX skills increased exponentially.
I really enjoyed my time at Celeri, and in this case study i will be showing you some of the work i did.
Keep in mind. This is a digital solution in the works so there might be pieses im not allowed to show you.
The Process
As mentioned earlier; when i started working for Celeri, they did not have UX designers working for the company. The idea and the target group was defined, and they had done surveys and gained a lot of interest for the product. However, the UX work done at that time was either done by a developer in school, or brand market and communicators.
There was also feasibility issues when it came to credit provider, and automated daily transfers. Which resulted in us at the UX team having to pivot many times. This was a good experience in my opinion, because this can happen when developing most digital solutions, and it sparked out creativity into how to solve, and work around certain issues in the designs.
However, for these reasons it also made it harder for the UX team to follow Design Thinking method meticulously, but as the UX lead i always made sure to keep it in mind.
Understanding the structure
When i started my Internship there was no Information Architecture in place. In my opinion, this is the cornerstone of all digital solutions. For that reason i met with the CEO, and the head of the development team, to review the framework at that time. This was followed by forming a simple IA in draw.io. Preferably, I would like to do some testing in the form of Card-sorting, but we did not have a budget for this.
After reviewing the current structure with the development team and the CEO, Me and the head of development agreed that we have some functions that users are more likely to do in other well established apps. These functions is good to include later on when Celeri´s app are in the marketplace, but for the MVP, we decided to strip it down, to focus on the main functionality.
Making a Design System
It was of high importance to make a design system for this digital solution. This will keep consistency through the designs, it will improve efficiency, and make collaborative work easier. This will also strenghten brand identity by ensuring that design elements adhere to brand guidelines.
Prototyping
When i started my time in Celeri, the company had somewhat of a prototype in figma. However, this was made by programmers and Brand market and communicators. We basically had to build most of the iterations from scratch. Im not allowed to show all the stages we went through, but i will show you some of the main pages for the app designs, and the changes i changed to make it work with feasability.
First iteration - Main page
As you can see in this frame, you can see your balance, and there is a visual representation in form of a graph.
After talking it over with the UX team, we did not understand the purpose. The visual design was nice, but if you get a daily salary, then it it wont fluctuate. And it does not show what the users daily salary is.
Another issue we ran into was feasibility. It was an ongoing problem with the cost of each and every transfer from the credit provider.
Final iteration - Main page pt 1
After many different iterations we came up with this main page. Changed the graph into a card with necessary information for the user: Daily salary amount(inside circle), balance(top left) and the difference since the user logged in. We also added a visual representation around the daily salary amount that would be easier to understand.
This card also doubles as a carousel in the frame underneath i will show you the functionality we user to work around the feasibility issue.
Underneath there are small round buttons if the user wants to change their salary details, enable daily savings or access their virtual card.
Final iteration - Main page pt 2
So the workaround i developed to the feasibility issue was that, we could use your Celeri card, filled with credit from our provider, and the full monthly amount is on the card first of the month, but it has a block for a certain amount.
Mostly users wants to use their own card, so we added this “lever” also with a block for that certain days amount, for it to feel like daily salary, without it needing to be pricey daily transfers.
Wireframes - Onboarding/Signup
Wireframes - Main frames
Celeri - B2B2C
During my last three weeks of my internship at Celeri, the company pivoted and changed their target user. The “Business to customer”, was set on hold to focus on the “Business to business to customer" version. I worked closely with the CEO, and i agreed with the decision being that the credit provider would be the business receiving the product from us, and it would be easier getting noticed in the market place going to businesses and ultimately generating revenue quicker.
B2B2C - Model
The new direction for this company worked very different. The main idea still was that people could receive daily payment, but this was a service that an employer could offer to their employees.
The employer would be the credit provider, and they would manage the transactions and add them to the payment plan.
Celeri also decided to co-operate with SWAN. SWAN´s API would handle all the daily transactions and adding people to the a payment plan. This ultimately made developing the MVP of this version possible without Back-end coding.
Within a weeks time, we started SCRUM and began developing this version of Celeri´s digital product.
UX - Content
1 Sign in/sign up page
Welcoming page with one button for sign in and one for sign up. After clicking either of these buttons, it would redirect to SWAN´s White label API.
2 Portal for Employers
- This was to include a list of all current transactions active at the time of the employers using the product.
- A way of deleting the transactions active at that time.
- A page for adding ned transactions to the payment plan.
3 Error pages 404 and 500
Prototyping
Wireframes - Sign up & portal
Wireframes - Error pages
Takeaway
🎓What I learned
My internship at Celeri was very different then earlier design processes. There were changes made many times, that led me to have to improvise and come up with great solutions. This was very important for me, because all prior design processes i had been part of had been school assignments where unforeseen changes and issues does not occur.
The experience of working with many different people in their respected field like developers, Brand Marked and communicators and stakeholder to make a digital solution was also a great experience, being that great work is team work, and to make a great product, every expertise has to be taken into concideration.
💥Impact
The impact this product can have could be phenomenal. Every part of personal finances are being handled on a monthly basis; Bills, subscriptions, loans, rent and mortgages. However, everything else can happens instantaneously; Ordering food, shopping online and streaming movies.
As we progress inn taking on this instant digital world, i think it would be preferable that personal finances follow.
Next steps
Test and iterate
Before releasing the B2B version to the market, it would be preferable to do some testing to eliminate possible pain points and increase usability for the target users.
This would be fairly simple because Celeri has already gained interest from relevant businesses. Celeri could gather a core group of relevant people from these businesses and test the solution.
My suggestion would be to start with contextual inquiry, to see and understand how users will interact with the product.
B2B to market
Getting the B2B version to market would be smart. Not just to check the interest in the business market, but also to gather revenue for the company.
Revenue will allow more funds to go to B2C version of the product, and showing the interest for daily pay will allow for more powerful and greater co-operations.
Billing, NFC and Transactions
The goal for this app as it progresses is that it becomes their one and only personal money app.
For this to work; Paying bills, making transactions with your friends and family, and also NFC functionality has to be added.
Thank you!
Thank you so much for reviewing my work. As i stated earlier, these were projects i worked on during a full time internship at Celeri. I worked as a UX designer and a UX lead. I learned a lot working for Celeri and enjoyed working with everybody at the startup. After almost three months working as an intern the financial funding for my salary fell through and i had to leave the company.