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THE COMPANY
The Public Procurement Portal is a digital bidding platform that connects buyers (public agencies at the municipal and state levels) with suppliers (companies and entrepreneurs) to conduct bidding processes in a fast, transparent, and secure manner. It operates as a technology solution based on the SaaS model.
THE PRODUCT
• A Marketplace build to connect buyers with suppliers in a simple way
• Facilitate the process of bidding in Brazil
• An accessible platform centered in promoting a better experience to users
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CHALLENGES
• Optimize a confusing userflow
• Understand the pain points and needs of our users
• Redesign an AI prompt used as our starting point
• Build a library of interface elements
• Implement an consistent component library based on the company's Design System
• Complete all the tasks above in only 3 months
A first glimpse on the problem
At the start of the journey, we faced a major challenge: time. The company had set a very tight deadline to launch the product as quickly as possible for a major national public procurement event. The user journey was unclear, and we had no idea what our prototype should look like. We began by using Miro to map the key journey points and the users’ pain points.
Yes, it was as confusing as it seams...
Benchmarking
Our second challenge was to understand the top marketplaces in Brazil to identify patterns and areas for improvement in our own. We looked up for Mercado Livre and Amazon for references and we found something that links with our solution: the thought that "using simple visuals we can make incredible experiences". And what do I mean by that? Minimalism.
Clarity over complexity
We found our starting point: as a platform for public procurement, we already had to deal with a lot of information and bureaucratic processes, so we needed to simplify the visuals as much as possible to create a light and friendly user experience. If we had chosen a bold visual style and layout, our target audience might not have felt confident enough to make complex decisions as the process advanced. By working with the Portal’s Design System, we were able to build an interface that reflected the simplicity we aimed for.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
Maya Angelou
Solutions
We knew we had to make our users feel secure while using the platform — but how? Inspired by Maya Angelou’s quote, we set our goal: if we could make users feel safe and at ease during a bureaucratic process, we would make a significant difference in the Brazilian market. With that in mind, the design process continued and we could - finally - work with Figma on the layout.
Nothing like a human touch...​
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The stakeholders were in a rush to envision a solution and turned to AI to build the first prototype. The skeleton was already there, but it lacked a human touch. We refined it to make the improvements we needed. The image bellow shows the AI layout.
As a brazilian designer, I could add a little extra flavor to this, right?
Design System
To begin the layout changes, we turned to our Design System to maintain consistency across the various platforms we were building. Specifically for the Marketplace, we made some adaptations to the components to give it a lighter look and adjusted the color variants to prioritize shades of blue — reinforcing a sense of security and calmness.
We prioritized light colors and soft shades.
The final product
As a result of a consistent design process, we were able to deliver a beautiful Marketplace focused on user experience and aligned with the company’s brand. The product is already being tested by a few selected users, and we hope to continue the design process with interviews and usability tests.
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The shopping cart's page
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The chat that connects buyers with suppliers
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