Product Owner
UX/UI Designer
Service Designer
Carrd (Website builder)
Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
Instant messaging app
Figma
Hotjar
3 months
Djungle Studio
The project Alfreedo consists in exploring a virtual assistance service aimed at simplifying the delegation of bureaucratic procedures, in order to give precious hours of the day back to users. The basic concept is simple: provide all the necessary information to Alfreedo and you will no longer have to deal with interfacing with the complex Italian bureaucracy.
For the preliminary discovery phase of the service, we decided to focus on a specific niche that we believe could particularly benefit from the service: expats.Is the service really attractive to people? How much are they willing to pay? What services are most in demand? Are they all really delegable? These are some of the questions we have tried to answer during the research phase to understand the desirability, feasibility and viability of the service.
In order to collect feedback and insights quickly, we conducted a series of tests using simple tools to relate to the user: landing pages, instant messaging services, social networks.
The information presented below is summarized mainly to highlight the development of the main interface and desirability test.
The market presents fragmented solutions and the competition is mainly made up of players that oversee "stand-alone" vertical services (taxes, tax practices and incentives, insurance, etc.).
Furthermore, most of the institutional sites are not easy to use: complex information architectures are presented and it is difficult to quickly find the instructions to carry out the practice you need and once you have found it is very likely that you need the help of a more knowledgeable person to decipher the content of the information found!
Here are more helpful insights we found highlighting user pain (also found during qualitative interviews):
• More than 1 in 3 people experience problems using Public Administration apps or sites or public services.
Source: ISTAT 2022
• 40% of employed people declare that they have quite or a lot of difficulty reconciling daily commitments with office hours, thus not being able to carry out administrative procedures.
Source: ISTAT 2014
Mmm... sounds good, let's start experimenting!
Let's start with the naming: why Alfreedo? If you were born in the 80s/90s and you think of a faithful assistant, Alfred, Batman's mythical butler, cannot but come to mind.
But let's add a little pepper and since we're in the kitchen the “fettuccine Alfredo” which symbolize the Italian spirit in the United States! We then add a fundamental concept that seeks to embody service: freedom from bureaucracy. Et voilà, Alfreedo was born!
In order to communicate a fresh, new and simple service, an attempt was made to distinguish the brand from the rigidity of classic bureaucratic services in order to be more friendly and create closeness and involvement with the public.
How did we translate all this into graphics? Friendly logo with emphasis on the word “free”, minimal palette but with captivating colors and welcoming fonts.
How do we promote our Value Proposition to reach potential users?
As already mentioned in the overview, we chose to focus on the niche of foreign users, as we felt that the inconvenience of dealing with Italian bureaucracy was even more significant for them than for Italian users.
We opened Alfreedo's profiles on social networks, using funny images and texts, in order to create sponsored ads that would direct users to the landing page. Our goal was to get users to leave their contact details and describe the problem to be solved via a contact form.
• 1000€ of ads
• 5000 page views
• 1 contact
Desirability not validated, but we don't give up, let's make some changes!
During Alfreedo's second experiment, we made significant changes to the page in order to return a more competent tone of voice and appearance, highlighting the potential of the service through mockup.
The second important change concerns the way we interact with the user. We shifted the focus of the page from trying to get in touch with the user via email, as this approach felt slow and distant, to instead getting in touch using the most popular instant messaging apps.
This has allowed us to reduce the distance with the user and offer a more immediate and direct interaction.
• 400€ of ads
• 66 leads
• 2 transactions
Desirability validated!
As we have seen, during the different stages of development of the Alfreedo service, we have been able to validate its desirability through valuable feedback that has helped us to improve it.
At the same time, we have dedicated efforts to refine internal procedures, in order to become faster and more prepared in managing the bureaucratic procedures received (such as which data to request, how to interact with users and stakeholders, etc.).
Following these iterations, we decided to open the service to Italian users as well, in order to analyze any differences and obtain a complete view of the service.
This allowed us to make strategic considerations on the future of the service, taking into account all the information collected.