Help SME’s quickly find & onboard quality gig workers
Discovery
Product Strategy
Product Design
Mobile
At a Glance
2 sides
of marketplace fully scoped
4 weeks
from brief to build-ready
Product & Roadmap
clearly defined & validated
Overview
Candou were a startup with a bold vision but no clear path from idea to product. My role was to:
- Translate strategy into a well-defined user-centred experience
- Define the core value proposition for both worker and hirer sides
- Shape the UX architecture, design direction, and product roadmap
- Ensure the experience scaled without sacrificing simplicity or trust
- Help the founding team validate assumptions through user insight and lean prototyping
In short: I helped them move from "We think this is a good idea" to "This is what we’re building, and here’s why it works.
The Casual Work Market is Huge, but Broken.
As a business owner, if you've ever tried to find last-minute help for something physical, local, or urgent, you’ve probably been burned—late arrivals, no-shows, vague pricing, questionable quality.
As a gig worker, it’s no better. Work is fragmented. You’re underpaid, undervalued, and easily replaced. There’s rarely continuity or respect.
Candou was born to solve both sides of this problem.
Work when you want, where you want. Hire when you need—without second-guessing reliability, safety, or professionalism.
“I don't need someone perfect. I need someone who'll actually turn up at 6am and know which end of a pallet jack to hold. Last time I used one of these apps, two people cancelled same-day and one just didn't show — no message, nothing. Then the invoice had fees I never agreed to. I'm not looking for a relationship with these people. I need four sets of hands for Saturday, I need to know roughly what that's going to cost before I say yes, and I need someone accountable if it goes wrong. That's it.”
Lewis, Events Manager
Discovery Insights
We knew the gig economy was saturated with platforms, but few were genuinely solving the trust gap. So we focused on two users:
1. The Hirer (B2B or Prosumer)
- Wants to quickly fill short-term roles for physical tasks
- Needs confidence in who’s showing up—and how much it’ll cost
- Feels burned by platforms that feel transactional and chaotic
2. The Worker
- Wants flexibility and dignity
- Values clear jobs, fair pay, and reliable payment
- Looks for a platform that helps them build—not hustle endlessly
Approach
I ran a series of strategy & design sprints — structured, intensive engagements designed to take Candou from a defined problem space to a build-ready product definition.
Working directly with the Founder and CEO, we focused the sprint around four interconnected product challenges:
- Trust and safety mechanics — what signals, verifications, and safeguards would make both workers and businesses feel confident using the platform?
- Two-sided marketplace dynamics — how do you design flows that serve both audiences without creating friction for either?
- Onboarding and identity verification — what is the minimum viable onboarding experience that establishes trust quickly without creating drop-off?
- Job matching and discovery — how do workers find the right roles, and how do businesses find the right people?
AI tools were used selectively throughout the sprint — accelerating research synthesis, helping model user journey variants quickly, and supporting rapid iteration on copy and UX logic. This allowed us to move faster without sacrificing rigour.
Scope & Definition
By the end of the sprint, Candou had a complete, validated product definition — the kind of clarity that lets engineering teams begin with confidence rather than questions.
Key outputs included:
- A fully scoped feature set covering both sides of the marketplace — worker and business — with clear prioritisation and rationale
- Defined trust and safety mechanics: the specific product features that translate 'trust' from a value into a verifiable, in-product experience
- Onboarding journey design for both user types, balancing verification thoroughness with conversion-friendly simplicity
- Job matching and discovery logic, scoped to what the MVP needs to prove — not what version two might require
- A product requirements overview ready for engineering handover
The Outcome
Candou left the sprint with what every early-stage platform founder needs before they write a single line of production code: absolute clarity on what to build first, and why.
The product scope was precisely defined — not aspirational, not bloated, but deliberately sized to prove the core value proposition: that casual work can be simple, safe, and human.
The founders could walk into conversations with investors, technical technical directors, or development partners with a product definition — not a pitch deck.
- A fully scoped MVP feature set covering both sides of the marketplace — worker and business — with clear prioritisation and rationale
- Defined trust and safety mechanics: the specific product features that translate 'trust' from a value into a verifiable, in-product experience
- Onboarding journey design for both user types, balancing verification thoroughness with conversion-friendly simplicity
- Job matching and discovery logic, scoped to what the MVP needs to prove — not what version two might require
- A product requirements overview ready for engineering handover
Impact on the People Who Matter Most
A marketplace platform only succeeds if both sides of it feel the difference. From the earliest sprint sessions, we kept the end user experience at the centre of every product decision — and tested our assumptions with real users to validate them.
For Workers:
- Real control over when, where, and who they work for — not just a feed of random gigs
- Significantly reduced ghosting through trust mechanics designed into the platform from the start — not bolted on later
- A platform that treats them as reliable professionals — with continuity, reputation, and identity built in
For Businesses:
- Access to consistent, high-quality workers they can rely on — not a different unknown person every time
- The ability to hire instantly with confidence — backed by a verification and trust layer that does the vetting upfront
- No surprise fees, no ambiguity — transparent pricing and clear terms that make every hire a low-risk decision
These outcomes weren't assumed — they were tested. Real users on both sides of the marketplace validated the core experience during the sprint, giving Candou the evidence it needed to build with conviction.
"I get to choose who I work for and when, and the businesses I work with know my track record — they're not starting from zero with me every time. That continuity means more consistent hours, and I'm not getting messed around by last-minute cancellations or vague terms. It's the first time one of these apps makes me feel like I've got a reputation worth protecting."
Louise, Candou user