Bogotá Cambalachea

OVERVIEW

Bogotá Cambalachea is the first digital time bartering platform in Bogotá. Here you can receive a service (take a class in any subject: photography, home repairs, accounting, cooking, etc) without spending a single penny. You will only have to pay back using your time.

Bogotá Cambalachea was nominated in 2017 for the “Índigo Awards” of the Colombian Technology Ministry in the category of “Digital Innovation for services”.

MY ROLE

I led the Design team of Bogotá Cambalachea Portal. I created the initial user flows and wireframes, I guided the visual design process and created and conducted the user testing sessions for each Sprint. I collaborated with a Product Owner and the Development Team.

*Bogotá Cambalachea, was a project carried out in collaboration with ViveLab Bogotá of the National University of Colombia, in agreement with the High District Council of Technology of the General Secretariat of the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá in 2016.

PROJECT DETAILS

Client

Bogotá City Hall

Duration

8 Months

How Does It Work?

If you have an ability, skill or knowledge; you can offer this as a service using the portal. Your remuneration will be equal to the hours you invested when providing your service to another user.
The hours you earn are called “Dorados” and you can invest them by acquiring the service or class from another user.

A time bank is a service exchange system where payment is made through a measure of time (hours).

Main challenges

How to make the portal close to the users?
How to make the objective and dynamics of the time bank completely clear so the users don’t confuse the portal with one for selling products?
How to make users rely on Cambalachea?
How to make users understand the exchange dynamics in the portal?

Benchmark

“It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel”.

The best three digital time banks were chosen to be analyzed. These had a consistent, fresh and user-friendly design as they evoked the experience of a social network.
The user flows of some of these referrences were easy to understand, intuitive and easy to use.

Timerepublik.com

Simbi.com

Bliive.com

A/B Testing

Applied to five users to identify the most attractive Home page proposal and to determine which one transmits the portal’s operation and objective in an agile and clear way.

Semantic Testing

A campaign was launched through social networks to involve users so they could choose the icon and the name for the virtual currency that would represent “one hour”.

Hybrid Card Sort

It was applied with the aim of improving the information architecture of the portal and to establish a simple and intuitive language.
The main objective was to identify the way in which users organize the different types of offers of the portal, as well as, to find an appropriate denomination for each content category.

User Testing

The design of the portal’s main flows was repeatedly tested by the technique of usability testing conducted inside a Gessell chamber.

Approximately 25 users in total participated in the entire test cycle.

For each of the sessions, a different protocol was created in order to evaluate approximately six to eight different tasks per session.

The clients always participated in the tests as observers.
They had to take notes of everything they saw (usability issues) through the glass from another side of the chamber.

At the end of each session, the most common notes were grouped and organized to identify the main usability difficulties. Subsequently, adjustments in terms of information architecture and design were made.

Approximate time per session: 30 to 40 minutes.
Software: Morae Recorder, Morae Manager and InVision.

User Flows with Blockframes

Flow: Setting up a deal

Visual Design

It was always an incremental and iterative design process, it was never a linear one.
At each stage, users were the protagonists because they always contributed with adjustments that were added within the design process to consolidate interfaces that, apart from being attractive, were simple, intuitive and usable as well.

Índigo Awards 2017

Bogotá Cambalachea was nominated in 2017 for the “Índigo Awards” of the Colombian Technology Ministry in the category of “Digital Innovation for services”

http://www.bogota.gov.co/temas-de-ciudad/gestion-publica/ cambalachea-esta-nominada-a-los-premios-indigo