Product discovery for a SaaS platform supporting microentrepreneurs

From hypotheses to product strategy: Combining UX research, journey and jobs-to-be-done mapping, prototyping and concept validation to redefine how microentrepreneurs access and manage essential business services.

Year: 2024

Role: Product designer / UX Researcher

Discipline: UX Research / UX Design

Industry: SaaS Startup

Background

This project was developed for a Brazilian Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that supports microentrepreneurs by helping them formalize their businesses and manage legal, administrative, and financial processes through digital services.

Goal

I worked as the UX Researcher and Designer, collaborating directly with the Product Manager.

The company wanted to explore new solutions for their platform but lacked a deep understanding of their users’ real needs. My mission was to understand the end-to-end journey of technology microentrepreneurs and identify actionable insights that could guide product strategy and solution design.

Methods

- Hypothesis Mapping + Research Planning: The first step was facilitating a workshop with stakeholders to review existing hypotheses. Based on the outcomes, I developed a research plan focused on technology microentrepreneurs (the company’s main target segment).

- User Interviews: I conducted 10 in-depth interviews with microentrepreneurs working in the technology sector. The goal was to understand their workflows, challenges, decision-making processes, and expectations related to business formalization and administrative management.

- Journey Mapping & Jobs To Be Done: After analysis, I mapped the full journey of a technology microentrepreneur.

Each stage of the journey included:

• Primary Jobs-to-be-Done

• Key pain points

• Potential “pain relievers” (solution opportunities)

This approach was especially important because the client lacked visibility into the full lifecycle of their users. Their initial assumptions were fragmented, so the journey map helped create a holistic and actionable understanding aligned with the startup’s need for practical solutions.

In the journey, videos from parts of participants’ interviews were included. Additionally, all jobs to be done were catalogued in the Dovetail Insights platform.

- Prototyping: The journey map was presented to stakeholders, and together we conducted ideation sessions to generate solutions addressing different parts of the journey.

Five concepts were prioritized based on:

• Coverage of different journey stages

• Severity of user pain points

• Strategic relevance

I developed prototypes for all five prioritized concepts.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/75b96e_65e3d3bc721443b0a8d8c6e31dad1b60/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

- Concept Testing: Concept testing sessions were conducted with five additional microentrepreneurs to evaluate:

• Perceived value

• Clarity of the solution

• Emotional resonance (“which ideas stood out most”)

Outcomes

The final deliverables included:

• A press release describing the selected concepts aligned with key Jobs-to-be-Done

• A solution pitch co-presented with the Product Manager

  
  

Two ideas were identified as the strongest opportunities and were combined into a unified solution proposal.

The main outcome was the implementation of bundled service packages for microentrepreneurs. Previously, services were offered individually, requiring users to navigate complex bureaucratic processes alone. The new solution simplified decision-making by offering integrated service packages, reducing cognitive load and helping entrepreneurs manage Brazilian administrative complexity more easily.'

Translated from Portuguese.