I'll cut to the chase for you. I had loads of fun working on new ideas, drafting them out and painstakingly make sure that alignments and elements made sense. A full application of the design-thinking process each time. It definitely trained my quick-thinking and for what it's worth, I'd do this all over again.

Having joined outside in late 2020, I was fortunate to be there when the team was rolling ahead with their growth and development. My role as a designer was to ensure that users could easily achieve what they wanted to do: to work.


It was important to identify the typical user journey through a flowchart. I won't go into details, but many flowcharts and many initial wireframes were made for every single. Some were preserved, some built, and some even just discarded after some time.

I will apologise for the low quality image (done on purpose). This is just to show the scale of the work done, not the details of it.

The wire-framing and prototyping stage saw many iterations and possible interactions users would have. We worked off feedback on what some users had experienced, but overall it is still a relatively unchartered territory in terms of this sort of platform, so we had to make sure that as many features can be accessed and then reviewed later on.

It was crucial to not let perfection be the cause of paralysis for the product to move forward.

Of course this does not look perfect. Some repetitive placeholder text, diagonal lines to cross out redundant screens, and best are floating pieces of comment scattered around the flow. This was a ubiquitous sight throughout most document, but helps to really keep track of any inputs. Yes there is a comment function in Figma, but it was much easier to work with (Text) and (Pencil) tools.

These are among some of the earlier iterations of the web-based business platforms. This was pulled from the company's page, to not post anything I'm not supposed to.

Looking at a webpage was quite dauting for me. My initial thought that moving from mobile to web would be easy. "Ah there's plenty of space!" My foolish self thought. It was actually really hard to be tactful with the information to present, so as to avoid making it just look like a presentation slide deck full of numbers and figures - It has to be functional!

A left-aligned navigation bar allows it to be neatly tucked aside, yet easy accessible whenever needed. Bright green buttons are few, but crucial as the main call-to-action (CTA) for each page. And most information on this dashboard presented are actionable from the get-go to different paths. From getting a job posted or contacting support, it took some time to get all the details sorted and to lay-out the seemingly 'best' information.

Of course, another iteration will have to be done, once evidence-based feedback from clients have pointed out problems they faced, but we hope that the first iteration would sufficiently serve their needs!

The truth is, many of these designs have yet to surface. Much like many architect's ideas, they don't really get built - we are limited by the technologies of our time! From loading time, to the cost of loading information from APIs, to just down-right ideas which the team does not agree upon. That's what real work is, and that is what Outside has allowed me to appreciate.