Creating Clearer Pathways to Entrepreneurship
Industry: Education
Role: Service Designer
Team:
• Lan Anh Tranová
• Maria Sabashvili
• Valeriia Sirik
Timeline: 6 weeks / 2025
Deliverables:
• Research & Analysis
• Ideation
• Wireframing & Prototyping
• Testing & Validation
I honed my design skills through an intensive six-week service design course with the CeMeWE project, coordinated by Laurea University of Applied Sciences. The program provides migrant women with practical skills through real client projects.
Our team partnered with the EU-funded IMIB-Network, which helps immigrants find employment in Finland. We focused on enhancing their Entrepreneurship Path.
Leveraging insights from our team-based user research, I helped design a strategic landing page and flyer to increase workshop attendance and commitment. Our work delivered actionable service design solutions to improve the program's outreach and support for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Solving the Phantom Participant Crisis
The Entrepreneurship Path had a critical flaw: while workshops attracted 30+ sign-ups, only 2-5 people attended. This major attendance gap meant the program's valuable resources were not reaching their full potential, and aspiring entrepreneurs were missing out.
We aimed to diagnose why interested participants disengaged and redesign the entire journey to build commitment.
Through our collaborative research process, we developed a connected set of solutions: a main landing page to bring together all key information, a clearer sign-up form that explained what to expect, and a recommendation for automated emails to keep people interested after they registered.
We developed and tested prototypes for the landing page, sign-up form, and flyer, creating a unified experience designed to turn interest into reliable attendance and ensure the program's long-term success.
Defining the Audience
Our research identified the target audience as educated migrants in Finland, primarily women aged 24-40. This group included EU students, non-EU students, job-seeking professionals, and refugees.
While their backgrounds varied, they shared a common goal: to build a stable, secure future for themselves and their families in a new country.
The very program designed to help them presented critical obstacles. The user journey was fragmented, with a LinkedIn account as the only information hub, forcing users to piece together details. This, combined with a lack of success stories, eroded trust and caused a high drop-off rate. Key frustrations included no reliable registration confirmations, generic communication, and an unclear value proposition.
Our strategy directly confronted these gaps. We focused on creating a modern, cohesive, and intuitive user experience designed to build credibility, simplify the onboarding process, and finally deliver the structured, trustworthy support our audience needed.
A UK project manager and new dad seeking career guidance to overcome language barriers and secure family income in Finland.
A French marketing student and young mother seeking childcare solutions and peer support to balance studies and family life.
An Indian IT student focused on securing a Finnish job, needing practical guidance on local job markets and visa processes.
A Ukrainian single mother and economics graduate pursuing language skills and stable employment to build a new life in Finland.
Research Highlights
Our team's approach was to use a structured, human-centered process to tackle the Entrepreneurship Path's main challenge. We started by identifying all key players and holding a collaborative kick-off meeting to ensure we were all on the same page.
The core of our work was deep user research. By developing four distinct user personas and mapping their experiences, we uncovered universal frustrations. This allowed us to move beyond assumptions and pinpoint the real barriers to participation.
We brought all our research together to identify the main reasons people were signing up but not showing up. These insights directly guided our brainstorming. We used questions like "How might we fix this?" and a simple voting system to choose the best ideas to pursue.
The project concluded with mapping the entire participant journey: from discovering a workshop to what happens after it ends. The service blueprint showed both the user's experience and the behind-the-scenes work required, ensuring our final plan would create a smooth, trustworthy process that worked for both the participants and the client.
The Affinity Diagram helps identify key barriers, such as fragmented sign-up, weak outreach, and unclear value, that led to low attendance.
The Stakeholder Map helps to identify key roles and relationships, showing Berenice's team as responsible and the universities as core partners.
The Empathy Map uncovers motivations behind users' desire for practical support, as well as their underlying fears of failure and systemic barriers.
The Analysis Matrix helps to identify key priorities across user groups, showing critical differences in needs for income, networking, and language skills.
The Value Proposition Canvas helps to identify key alignments between the target audience's needs and program offerings.
The Lotus Blossom technique helps to identify key solution areas for participant engagement, spanning marketing, accessibility, and community building.
The Evaluation Matrix helps to identify key priorities, scoring solutions based on impact and feasibility to select the most effective improvements.
The Service Blueprint maps all key interactions and internal processes needed for a seamless workshop experience.
Design Highlights
The final design phase was a highly collaborative effort where we developed and tested key service touchpoints.
These prototypes create a seamless user journey from initial discovery on a flyer, through informed validation on the landing page, to final commitment via an intentional registration process.
Maria took the lead on redesigning and testing the sign-up form, focusing on usability. Valeriia established the creative direction by designing the initial flyer prototype. I then created a refined version, using my graphic design expertise to enhance the visual appeal and test its effectiveness, resulting in a more engaging and clear final flyer.
Furthermore, I worked closely with Lan Anh to co-design and develop the landing page, where we continuously integrated user feedback to ensure it was both intuitive and effectively communicated the program's value.
The original flyer used abstract language and a text-heavy layout, lacking clear incentives and specific speaker information to build trust.
The new flyer builds trust with clear benefits, key perks, and a scannable layout featuring speaker details.
The original form functioned as a basic contact list, lacking questions about user goals and requiring a non-specific commitment to the entire program.
The redesigned form boosts intentional sign-ups by gathering user goals and introducing flexible, per-workshop registration.
The redesigned layout uses clear visual hierarchy, scannable sections, and strategic white space to create an intuitive and engaging user journey.
The new landing page builds trust and drives sign-ups with strong testimonials, a clear value proposition, and a streamlined registration path.
Project Impact
While direct metrics are pending, the project's impact was strategic and immediate. The client enthusiastically received our evidence-based solutions, expressing a clear intent to implement our redesigned sign-up form and flyer to address the critical attendance gap.
Our deliverables provided a clear, practical blueprint for change. The service blueprint mapped the entire ecosystem, while the landing page strategy established a single source of information.
This gave the client a complete plan to rebuild the participant journey from the ground up, replacing confusion with clarity and friction with a smooth, guided experience.
Looking Back
This project taught me the power of a collaborative team and a proactive client. Our team's strong connection and shared vision allowed us to combine our strengths effectively, while the client's open communication created a truly productive partnership.
I particularly enjoyed the challenge of designing presentations that made our complex research accessible and engaging. This process was key to structuring our story and ensuring everyone, from our team to the client, could easily grasp the insights
Ultimately, I learned that clear, simple communication is one of the most valuable skills in service design.
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