Autono
Designing a GovTech app for collective intelligence and decision-making
Scope of work
UX research and discovery
Field interviews and user personas
Product definition and journey mapping
Co-creation workshops with product and tech
Usability testing of the MVP
Outcomes
90%
would adopt Autono
for collective governance
100%
reported faster, more inclusive
decision-making
Why democratic governance?
The social economy model, followed by cooperatives, tech-for-good organisations and many other enterprises, seeks to balance profit with social impact. These groups care deeply about equality, transparency and social responsibility. Yet their day-to-day work – from legal paperwork to collective decision-making – is often slowed down by outdated processes and a lack of purpose-built tools.
Autono set out to create a digital platform that captures the peer-led practises of collective intelligence and democratic governance, while easing the real-world challenges that come with them.
I led the UX research on this project, helping shape Autono's product market fit.
3 Big Takeaways
01. Grounded research with real users shapes product-market fit
02. Translating complex democratic governance into clear, accessible UX
03. Validated at scale, ready for growth
Insights from cooperatives
Discovery
To understand the real challenges social economy groups face, I began with a field study. I attended a housing co-op summit in Brussels and a workshop on starting a co-op. These events helped me connect with potential users and shape the research from the ground up.
I conducted five in-depth interviews with co-op founders, board members, employees and volunteers across diverse sectors, including incubators, culture and housing.
Pain points
Affinity mapping of the interviews helped highlight key pain points common across sectors:
Slow decision-making reduces engagement
Legal setup and governance models are complex
Volunteer reliance leads to burnout and handover issues
Balancing social values with financial viability is challenging
I ran a survey with broader community groups to learn about their challenges, the tools they use and what’s missing. The results confirmed similar pain points and uncovered additional ones.
Building with care
User personas
Based on the research, I created user personas that brought our core audiences to life – including Hannah, a co-op founder, and Liam, a volunteer. These personas helped prioritise features, shape user flows and align the design with both user needs and business goals.
Journey mapping
I also ran journey mapping sessions with the product owner and CTO, using early wireframes to spot gaps and refine key features before moving forward.
As a team, we turned key aspects of collective governance – like consensus voting and shared documentation – into a clear, user-friendly digital experience. Throughout the process, I advocated for users, backed-up decisions with research data and prioritised accessibility.
Testing the MVP
We tested Autono's high-fidelity prototype with five users from different co-op sectors. I used a rainbow spreadsheet to track user feedback, error patterns and advise on usability improvements.
Testing with disabled users helped spot errors in icon usage, steps that felt repetitive and text that was hard to understand. Their specific feedback helped shape accessibility improvements as Autono works towards WCAG AAA compliance.
Governance at Scale
To close out my research, I onboarded a client with 40,000 members to test governance at scale. User interviews with this client confirmed Autono's product-market fit. Autono’s next step is to scale the platform for medium and large social economy organisations.