MKE BOSS
Research and Service Design to connect the Black & Brown Entrepreneurial System in Milwaukee
Role
Strategy & Design Consultant
Design Research and Strategy Consultation
Location
Team
4
Clients: Wisconsin Women's Business Initiative Corporation, Self Help Credit Union, Northwest Side Community Development Corporation, JP Morgan & Chase
Deliverables
Remote
Lending to minority small business owners is fraught with a historic legacy of redlining and racial bias. the Minority Small Businesses Bureau in Milwaukee and a cohort of institutions sought to create a more equitable, accessible, and synergistic ecosystem of support for Black and brown small business entrepreneurs that equips them with the resources relevant in operating and growing their businesses successfully. I worked within an interdisciplinary team to help design a solution to improve access to capital for the Minority Small Businesses Bureau in Milwaukee.
Project Brief
How might financial institutions support minority small business owners to thrive?
THE SOLUTION
Community research, engaging local Black and brown small business entrepreneurs
THE PLATFORM
MKE BOSS stands for Milwaukee Build, Operate, Scale, and Sustain. It is a digital platform for entrepreneurs to find and engage with services that can meet their specific business needs, and easily get matched with those providers. The platform acts as a one-stop-shop for small business entrepreneurs to seek support, and for service providers to offer support and/or make referrals.
DESIGN & USER RESEARCH
Working within a research team, I supported user research activities and data synthesis for MKE Boss. We spoke with entrepreneurs to learn about their needs, aspirations and experiences in building a business and seeking support from financial institutions. We also engaged with local CDFIs and banks to identify opportunities and needs in the Milwaukee entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Data Management & Synthesis
Through conducting meticulous data synthesis and management, I played a pivotal role in my team highlighting disparities between the needs of entrepreneurs and the offerings of financial institutions, shedding light on critical pain points and gaps in services.
IDEATION & PROTOTYPE
As a team, we conducted a user testing session on twenty participants. I then took the responses through a card-sorting exercise to find common themes among the participants.
Paper Prototype
THE RESULTS
We created MKE BOSS (Milwaukee Build, Operate, Sustain, and Scale) a digital platform with two primary functions:
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Empowers entrepreneurs to find and engage with services that match their or their business’s specific needs and will help Build, Operate, Sustain, and Scale their business.
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Allows service providers to showcase their services to entrepreneurs in the entrepreneur tool, receive and track client leads, manage client relationships, and send and receive referrals.
This functionality increases awareness, transparency, and consistent communication across the entrepreneurial ecosystem regardless of role or goal.
Testing done during research, design, and development has been remarkably positive, with entrepreneur and service provider participants calling the platform “powerful,” “clean,” and “easy to use.”
