Your Work Buddy

Your Work Buddy

Rethinking Freelance Work

MY ROLE

UX Lead - Logo & Branding, Illustration, Visual Design, User Flows, Rapid Prototyping

DELIVERABLES

Component Libraries

User Interviews

High Fidelity Designs

TEAM

Product Managers

Developers (Web and

Mobile)

CLIENT / YEAR

Loopy Studios - 2024

Problem At Hand

Most freelance platforms (Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer) reduce work to cold transactions — job posts, proposals, and endless waiting. Talents compete with copy-pasted proposals, while clients struggle to identify real fits.

The result? Frustration, fatigue, and missed opportunities.

YourWorkBody set out to solve this by asking: What if freelancing felt less like bidding and more like a conversation?

Where We Started

Early research showed that both clients and talents felt friction in the current system:

Talents disliked burning "connects" on proposals that never got replies.

Clients felt overwhelmed by low-quality or irrelevant pitches.

We explored how messaging apps and conversational flows create trust and immediacy.

Insights made it clear: to stand out, YourWorkBody had to move away from “cold proposals” and toward warm interactions.

The Conversational Core

At the heart of YourWorkBody is the conversation.

Every interaction — discovery, negotiation, proposals, deliverables, happens inside a chat-like environment.

This shifted freelancing from transactional to relational.

Key features born from this idea:

• Waves: Instead of spending tokens on formal proposals, talents send a simple “wave” to show interest.

• Freemium vs. Premium Flow: Freemium talents send default waves.

Premium talents can send custom messages, positioning themselves more strongly.

• Client View: Clients see waves, review portfolios, and decide who to accept into conversation. This keeps intent clear and prevents spam.

Designing a Two-Sided Experience

We worked on both Talent and Client journeys:

For Talents:

• Profile building with portfolios and skills.

• Smart job suggestions matching expertise.

• Earnings dashboard and plan upgrades.

For Clients:

• Easy job posting and talent discovery.

• Company and personal accounts.

• Transaction history and dispute resolution tools.

From Conversation to Collaboration

Once inside the chat, work doesn’t scatter across tabs, emails, or documents. Everything flows naturally:

Proposals inside chat: Talents can draft, send, and revise proposals directly in conversation.

Counter-offers: Clients can suggest changes (scope, budget, timelines) in real time.

Deliverables dashboard: Each project has a Trello-like tracker built into the chat. Clients mark tasks as ongoing, pending review, or completed.

Payments & earnings: Freelancers track income while clients manage transactions without leaving the platform.

Challenges & Trade-offs

Balancing freemium and premium tiers: Needed to give free users a taste of value without cannibalizing premium.

Overhauling expectations: Many stakeholders assumed it should work like Upwork. We had to carefully argue for why the conversational model was stronger.

Designing “waves”: Too casual, and it risked looking like social media; too rigid, and it lost its simplicity. Iterations helped us strike the right tone.

Key Metrics

25%

Increase in in client–talent matches within the first month of testing the wave system, showing reduced friction compared to traditional proposals.

70%

Freelancers in user testing reported preferring waves to “burning connects” on other platforms, citing it as “simpler” and “less stressful.”

60%

Adoption of the deliverables dashboard during beta, validating its role as a lightweight project tracker.

2x

Higher engagement from premium users, who were more likely to get accepted by clients due to custom messages.