The Challenge of a Freelancer

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Freelancing has become increasingly popular in recent years, offering individuals the opportunity to work on their terms and pursue their passions. However, freelancers often face several challenges like; lack of job security, receiving payment for their work, accessing financial services, difficulty finding consistent work, and limited access to resources and support. These challenges can lead to financial instability, isolation, depression and stress, which can ultimately reduce a Freelancer's quality of life. The idea for this project emerged from a desire to address these challenges and proffer solutions.

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Anyone who has freelanced at some point in time will know how hard it is to get decent jobs. Early on in my career, I had tried Upwork (a freelancing platform)- sending tons of proposals day and night which was futile. I decided to give Fiverr (another freelancing application) a shot and eventually managed to get my first gig. It was a reasonable one because the person was looking for a Nigerian to work with. After my first Gig, finding a reasonable gig afterwards has been a war. I went from earning $200 to eventually having $150 in my Payoneer account because of international payments and remittance to my Naira wallet. The issue of payment and conversion to Naira is a major problem also faced by Freelancers in Nigeria.

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I have had my fair share of the "Freelancing troubles" and I realise that I would be biased if I paint my experience on others. After all, Olaniyi who is a content writer shared the story of how he became rich and went ahead to own 3 flats just by freelancing on Upwork via Linkedin. Different strokes for different folks, they say. The same Upwork that got me frustrated made others rich.

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Racism, Scam, and Exploitation

There are too many challenges a Freelancer faces. Is this what I feel or are there pains beneath the glamorous stories of racking up dollars daily? To find answers, I decided to speak with Emmanuel who has roughly three(3) years of experience Freelancing platforms on various platforms.

Emmanuel have had a mix of earning fat and gaining his customer's trust but sometimes, Fiverr itself disable his gigs or blocks his account for whatever reasons. This has happened three(3) times in 3 years. On other days it's the story of foreign client's who wouldn't have Africans work for them or scammers who hide under the pretence of being clients or clients who work and not pay or clients who want freelancers to work on their projects full-time. Now I know there are challenges beyond the glitz and glamour. At this point, I was even more than eager to define my problem because now I understand the problem I am trying to solve.

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Defining the Problem

For many Freelancers in Nigeria, finding consistent and well-paying work can be a significant challenge. Additionally, managing  finances, investing  for the future, and planning for travel can be difficult without access to resources and support. As a result, many Freelancers struggle to maintain a high quality of life and achieve financial stability.

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Laying the Foundation for Research

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For my research, I wanted to understand how people perceive freelancing and why people consider freelancing. However, this is a familiar terrain and it is easy to assume a lot which I consider them to be my "biases". I had to come to terms with them so I can mitigate their effects on my project. Here are some of my biases listed below:

• Those who Freelance the most are those who are just starting out in their career.
• The majority Freelance because they want to earn in dollars
• People Freelance because of the flexibility it gives to work from anywhere and anytime

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Seeing Through Existing Perspectives

From my research, I got to understand that it is not enough to see things through the Freelancer's perspective alone. It's essential to strike the needful balance by considering why a business-owner will want to hire a freelancer as well. Hence, I interviewed three(3) business-owners and three(3) Freelancers to gain understanding from divergent angles.

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Competitive Analysis

There are myriads of platforms for Freelancers much of which doesn't address the problems they face. With the knowledge of the struggles faced by Freelancers, I decided to tailor my analysis down to the popular job-searching platforms where freelancers get jobs from. However, I streamlined my competitive analysis down to critically screening the strengths and weaknesses of these platforms so I can create a usable decision for my users from a place of informed decisions.

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Interview Insight

My interview was centered on knowing the experience people have with Freelancing, how they work towards living a wholesome life. Surprisingly, 8 out of the 10 people I interviewed have a full-time job and Prefer to get jobs through referrals. They have had their fair-share of the "freelancing struggles". 5 out of them Freelanced in the early days of their career, built their portfolio out of that and applied for full-time roles. Beyond Freelancing, the 10 of them agreed to trying of Freelancing again if they get a platform that caters to their needs and provides them with easy access to jobs without prejudice. I documented my insight below which I find interesting because it challenged some of my biases.

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Visualising Who my Users Are

Creating my personas gave me crucial insight into understanding who I am designing for and it opened up the extra layer of understanding their pain points.

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Amplifying the Voice of my Users

In most design process, I have noticed that there are subtle voices of users echoing beneath but most times we tend to ignore because we haven't carried out enough research. At this point, I decided to connect the bit and pieces by listening to the voices in each step of the design process. This really defined the key features that was included in the mobile app.

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Defining the Flows

Defining my User flow was quite challenging because the app does a lot and can be used by the user for several purposes. However, having my flows defined the linking process between each screes and it helped me discover dead ends.

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Creating the Cutting-edge Solution

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How can we save for Travels and all?

Primarily, there are two types of saving on this platform. You can save with others or save for personal purposes. Users can see a chart that pictures how well or poorly they are doing. This process can be automated by permitting to take a percentage as the earns more or it is carried out manually as the user pleases.The user can top up their account through different payment channels: Wallet, Bank Transfer, and Card Payment. Finally, the user gets to see transaction history specific to their savings and also gets to see the overall history in a place.

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Goal Smashing

The user’s dashboard shows their overall earnings, jobs done, and pending jobs. The explore page as the name implies shows the overall features that can be explored on Pivot. Leveraging existing solutions such as Eden Life and Bamboo, the product can provide discounted services for the freelancers who use this product. You can only make purchases from your wallet and not with other payment options. This process can be automated or carried out manually.

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How to Get Rich and not Die Trying

There is a list of stock options that can be explored. The user gets to pay directly from their waller. i.e. They can invest as they earn. This process can be automated to ease the stress of having to do this as you earn or it can be done manually, however, the user wishes to do their thing.

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Growth Plan

Personalized Resumes and cover letters for specific fields. This will be generated by AI. The user can click on this during their job application process. More often than not, users drop off at the point when they are to add an attachment during the job application process.

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UI Kit

I created my UI kit to make my designs faster and more efficient.

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Video Prototype of the Pivot App

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What’s Next?

I still have a list of features to add later in the future. I will be adding to the list and creating their specific flows.

• A leaderboard for savings so you can see the person topping the list.
• Automate all process that involves money. This is because this ecosystem has no structured means of making money. The user gets to make money as they work.
• How do we verify these travel plans?
• How do we leverage AI to make processes faster?

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Key Takeaways

I  learned about how human beings are wired and how brands tap into our psychological makeup to create unique experiences for their users. The Freelancing ecosystem is quite unstructured. For some people, “freelancing” is just an interlude - a phase between when they want a career break for whatever reasons while some juniors break into their industry by creating meaningful work experiences through this means.

I learned that as human beings we yearn for validation and we want to know that people care for and about us. Without human interaction, we cannot survive. People want to explore life beyond the confines of their immediate environment. This project is indeed an eye-opener for me.

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