Ratio Exchange Mobile App Concept Design Challenge

Welcome to Ratio Exchange Mobile App Concept Design Challenge.
 
We need your help to come up with a design solution for a hybrid mobile application that will work as a connector, trying to connect supply and demand of the innovation market in a wide variety of industries. In other words, ideas and promising projects need to connect with the appropriate investment individuals or companies, supported by an intelligent environment (AI) which learns from the acquired data to help the users optimizing the matches and connecting experience.

Best of luck.

Round 1

Submit your design for a checkpoint feedback.

1. Register
2. Feed
3. Company Profile
4. Exchange Advisor

- Please provide a MarvelApp Presentation (see details below).
- Make sure all pages have correct flow! Use correct file numbering. (00, 01, 02, 03)

Round 2

Submit your final design plus checkpoint feedback.

1. Register
2. Feed
3. Company Profile
4. Exchange Advisor
5. Challenges
6. Create Challenges
7. Notifications

- Please provide a MarvelApp Presentation (see details below).
- Make sure all pages have correct flow! Use correct file numbering. (00, 01, 02, 03).
The goal of this competition is to come up with the look and feel of a mobile hybrid application. The concept is at an early stage, we are open to receiving suggestions about features and workflow to achieve the envisioned functionality of the business model.

Concept Design Goals
Our global vision is to launch a new, global platform that connects innovation supply to innovation demand to solve tomorrow’s hardest and most challenging problems as our roadmap states. Users will come to the Exchange to sell something, solve something, source something, or invest in something. The platform (or marketplace) will enable all of this, but not through traditional commerce transactions but more so from an awareness and notifications perspective. All deals and negotiations will be handled outside the platform / exchange at this time.

There are three major actors on the platform
- Innovation supplier: companies, startups, entrepreneurs, and innovators that have current, new, or emerging products, technologies, platforms.
- Innovation demander: companies, investors, clients, or customers that are seeking new and innovative products, platforms, and technologies
- Partners/Brokers: companies that play “in the middle” that can provide services to both innovation suppliers and demanders. 
- Exchange Advisor (AI): think of this as a AI advisor that matches innovation suppliers, demanders, and partners/brokers / an engine that helps the user getting accurate information (opportunities).

The platform works as the glue of these two isolated islands, offering features and flows to engage in a seamlessly way, offering tools to provide confidence, trustability and accomplishment.

The most important features you need to keep in mind
- Feed. Main feature that matches innovation supply to demand, and a users ability to explore the marketplace of customers / users to see what interests them.
- AI. The system will learn from the data acquired.
- Simplicity. People are busy. Let’s leverage AI and technology to make things simple for them – specifically as it relates to the engine for how we surface new products, platforms, and technologies.
- Visual. People are visual. Images, videos, chatbots, etc., to keep them engaged and wanting to learn and explore more opportunities.
- Gamification. This is important, but not critical.   We see this as a way of keeping people engaged in the platform as opposed to unlocking levels or other areas of functionality. We would like to see ideas around gamification features competitive wise. For example “you’ve accepted 5 challenges are now received a star for your aggressiveness”, “you accepted 5 challenges you’ve unlocked a new feature that allows you to find out more information about your challenger”. Where are gamification opportunities within this app? Show us.

Solution Considerations
- At this stage of the project we are very flexible to hear suggestions about the flow.
- We are going to describe the features and flow as much as possible so you can propose how to organize all the content in screens.
- Do not feel limited by the content you read, feel free to do research and expand on the way we propose to display these features.

Visually speaking, we are looking forward to seeing a design an engaging application, it should look fun to use at the same time as professional and trustworthy. What we definitely do not want to see is another LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Sure we’ll have feeds like each of them but they need to be targeted at the markets, sectors, and capabilities a company provides or a customer needs.

See the full platform description for more background information.

Screens Requirements
Overall
- Please suggest how to organize this content and group them into screens, we are looking forward to see your unique proposals, be bold. The following screens and mockups are just initial suggestions but we think content could be organized in a different way, go for it!
- Think of providing a seamlessly navigation through the features of the app, not just a main navigation menu, all of it across the engaging experience. Besides what you can come up with, please consider these items for the navigation:
-- Notifications
-- Profile/Settings
-- Search

1. Register
Registration flow should cover several steps keeping in mind the main premise: simplicity. The goal of this process is getting the user “on” the Exchange and starting to interact with it quickly.

Initial Set Up
First fields to be presented to the user:
- Name
- Phone Number
- Email Address
- Logo / Photo

User should have options to register using social network accounts LinkedIn, Twitter and Google.

Two-Factor Authentication
User will use the mobile number as a second identity verification method for the account. Please create this flow:
- User gets prompted a screen to enable two-factor authentication.
- User receives a SMS with a code.
- User enters the code in the mobile app.
- The app finishes the registration and authentication process.

Interest Profile Completeness
After verification, a screen that walks something through their profile basics.
What’s your role on the Exchange? I want to sell something, solve something, source something, invest in something.
- Select your profile - are you an innovator, start-up, partner, customer, investor?
- What markets and sectors are you interested in?
- What capabilities and services do you provide or need?
- How often do you want to be notified we an opportunity comes up? (real-time, daily, weekly, monthly)

Complimentary Profile Fields
- Photo Upload
- Business/Organization Name
- Position Title
- Address
- City, state, zip
- Country
- Office Phone, fax, etc

Note that the order and the way this information will be requested is not written in stone. We’re looking forward to seeing your suggestions.

2. Feed
Cornerstone piece of the application. The major interaction of the user will occur on this section. Users need to quickly be able to go through the Feed (opportunities found for them) and chose whether they’re interested or not. If they are not interested we should capture why, but via an interface that learns; this will feed the AI engine to be more precise over time.

Use Case
The Exchange posts a procurement opportunity for companies in the Federal Sector that are interested in Cloud Analytics for the Federal Financial Market. The opportunity is for $2m over 2 year. Users that provide this capability can read more, like it, follow it, share it, or respond to who posted it or their instructions for response. And, the link if was pulled from an external source.

2.1. Feed Listing/Browse
User will be able to see a list/set of exchange items to interact with. Imagine a feed similar to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc, with specific content for connecting the supply and demand.

Feed Items (these are opportunities that the user has followed, have been shared by someone else, direct messages, or things the AI Exchange Advisor pushes to the user. For each feed item:
- Description/text, photo, video, etc.
- Follow (i.e., follow an opportunity, follow a company, etc.), Share, Mark / Save (makes the Feed item a priority).
- Contact author (messages?).
- Swipe right (interested). Swipe left (not interested), why? - Attention, we’re proposing swapping but we are definitely open to see suggestions about how to quickly interact in order to indicate “I’m interested” or “I’m not interested”.
- If user is interested, then we ask them “add to your priorities, learn more, or both”. Adding to priorities creates a list they can always go back to.
- If  the user selects not interested then we need to prompt a dialog to capture the reason why, probably with some prefilled options (i.e., wrong market, no interest, etc.).
- Link to read more details.
- Type indicator (open to suggestion how to handle this). There could be items that are flagged as  ‘challenges’ (see 7 for more details).
- Feed category, we call them “Acceleration Lenses”:
-- Procurement Opportunities
-- Capital Opportunities
-- Partnership Opportunities
-- Federal Grants
-- Talent Availability
-- Innovation Challenges
-- Etc.

2.2. New Post
Design screen (s) to showcase the new post sample.
- User starts a new entry.
- User can write text, attach photo, video, etc.
- Content will be related to their business, new clients, won contracts, new advancements in tech, needs, etc.

2.3. Feed Details Showcase
User has the ability to see the full details of a feed item. As well as performing the actions mentioned in 2.1. such as following, showing interest, responding, etc.

3. Company Profile
We will be collecting research data of the companies that form part of the Exchange. Create a design for details view of a company profile that shows the data extracted from these examples (up to your suggestions). See items like: name, address, corporate info, statistics, contact, sectors, services, etc.

Also add a section of Analytics for the company. It should contain the following:
- Analytics from the standpoint of what information can users trend around a specific company (i.e., growth history, number of challenges completed, product categories, etc.), doesn’t have to be perfect but something when customer clicks on a company to get more intelligence.
- The Ratio Index. This is a score (from 0 to 10) the company according to their exchange activities. Think of this like a stock score and whether users should invest or not.

4. Exchange Advisor
User has the ability to select two types of advisors in the application:
A. Exchange Assistant (AI): Automated friendly agent.
B. Exchange Advisor: a real person/company selected by the user.

Both types of advisors have the same goal, to watch / monitor feeds and help companies broker relationships and opportunities in the Exchange. The main difference, one is automated and the another one a real human. More nuances in details below. We need to see designs of the user interacting with both types of advisor.

4.1. Exchange Assistant (AI)
This will be a bot that’s assigned to every user by default. It should exist in the application after registration.

Most prominent features:
- User can name the agent. For example “Bill”. Then the UI would refer to this agent as Bill for conversations and notifications such as “Bill just found an exciting opportunity for you to look at”. Think of a chatbot, Siri, Alexa, etc, for reference.
- User can set a profile picture to the assistant.
- User can select feeds/opportunities channels that the Exchange Assistant will analyze on their behalf (i.e., look for new procurements, find new capabilities in the market, channels to monitor, I need developers, conferences in my area, trends, capital opportunities, etc.)
- Interaction possibilities are endless with this agent. The way you choose how to integrate it into the app must consider the friendly aspect of it.
- Show how the user can set the parameters to the assistant.
- Show the messages or notifications between the assistant and the user. For instance, “Hi Jim. I noticed this (project) on the Exchange and thought you may be interested. Going back to swipe left/right, and why… (actions).

4.2. Exchange Advisor
- User selects the advisor manually from an available set of authorized Advisors. They could be persons or companies.
- A user can have several advisors, from 1 to 5 for the moment.
- User can select which feed channels/categories are wished to be followed by his/her advisor.
- Exchange Advisor helps getting independent contracts with the companies (i.e., strategy, relationships they have, mentorship, leadership, etc.). This is NOT automated.
- Exchange Advisor holds communications with the user to communicate any insight or opportunities from the watched channels.
- Show how the user selects an advisor.
- Show the messages or notifications between the advisor and the user.

5. Challenges
This is where customers puts the Exchange to work. We need a cool interface that allows companies to accept challenges, for example hackathons, procurements, pilots, prototypes, etc. Think of Topcoder challenges but themed to the Exchange environment, there would be posted opportunities, users would be able to see the details, the reward, join, etc. For example, a government agency is interested in piloting a new LiFi technology and is reaching out to the market with their requirements. Industry then responds with what they have and how they could solve it.

We envision this function this way (at least initially). Challenges will be addressed to user profiles who want to:
A. Solve something
B. Source something
C. Invest in something

Challenges would be based on the user selecting the market, sectors, capabilities & services (i.e., the Exchange Taxonomy) then be posted to the Feed with some sort of visual indicator so user know this is a challenge.

The overall workflow:
- Users see available challenges. They could be seen in a list or as the result of a suggestion from an advisor or the assistant. 
- User can read the whole details of a challenge then accept it or reject it.
- If they accept it, the person who issued the challenge would get a list of those who accepted and can use the platform to broadcast next steps, where to go to sign up for the challenge, etc. At this time we will not “manage” the challenge through the mobile platform, for your information. So you would only need to place the accept/reject buttons.
- Notice we are not listing specific requirements such as listing view, details view, etc. We want you to add your own thoughts to this flow and come up with what you consider an appropriate solution.
- Create a couple of screens to showcase how the user views the challenges and how he/she accepts a challenge.

6. Create Challenge
- User can create a new challenge.
- Challenge fields are title, description, categories, thumbnail.
- User can select to send the challenge directly to one person, to a group of persons or publicly available for all the market.
- Showcase how to create a new challenge.

7. Notifications
Create a notifications view with examples of the different type of interactions and available actions related to them, for instance (open to suggestions):
- An exchange you follow just updated the content (view more).
- Insights from an exchange you follow.
- Just received a message (reply/cancel).

Branding Guidelines
- Colors and typography are open to suggestions.
- Use a placeholder for the logo.
- Keep things consistent. This means all graphic styles should work together.

Screen Specifications
- Mobile: 750px width. Height as much as needed.
- Make sure your work is in a vector format, for retina scaling and high fidelity.

MarvelApp Presentation
- Request a MarvelApp prototype from me (mahestro@copilots.topcoder.com).
- Do not use the forums to request for MarvelApp.
- Provide clickable spots (hotzones) to link your screens and showcase the flow of the solution.
- Provide the MarvelApp shareable link in your notes during submission upload. See example.

Stock Artwork (Illustrations, Icons, Photography)
- Stock artwork is allowed for this challenge.
- Make sure to declare all your assets properly or you might fail screening.
- You don’t want to fail screening? Read this.

Target User
This product is targeted to the US market.

- Innovation supply (typically startups and newco’s – aged between 30-40).
- Innovation demand side (decision makers in companies, 15 years at a specific company, probably 40-50 years old).

We think users need this tool because today’s system is broken. Innovators don’t have access to customers who need something and customers try to do things internally before going outside.

Judging Criteria
- Interpretation of the user experience.
- Is the application visually appealing?
- Is the application easy to use?
- Are mobile-first considerations appropriately applied to the design concept?
- Cleanliness of your graphics and design.

Submission & Source Files
Preview Image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024px JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.

Submission File
Submit JPG/PNG for your submission files.

Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or Sketch. Layers should be named and well organized.

Final Fixes
As part of the final fixes phase you may be asked to modify your graphics (sizes or colors) or modify overall colors. We may ask you to update your design or graphics based on checkpoint feedback.