Usule — Isabella Ferracci

Ù-SuLé’s mission is to empower small entrepreneurs by helping them gain control over their administrative and operational chaos.

In Latin America, many solo business owners still rely on paper or basic software, struggling with financial tracking, inventory, and client follow-ups.

My task was to extract real user needs and design recommendations to guide the development of an MVP that feels intuitive, not intimidating.

I joined the team as a freelance Service Designer and UX Researcher to guide the team in building a user-centered MVP. Beyond just conducting research, I played a strategic role in shaping their approach to product development, introducing UX and Service Design methodologies into their workflow.

My Role

Before diving into fieldwork, I facilitated an internal onboarding with the Ù-SuLé team:

Introduced UX and Service Design practices, including empathy mapping, journey mapping, and behavioral segmentation.
Helped them reframe their assumptions into design hypotheses and research questions.
Created a co-researcher guide to align interview techniques and ethical guidelines.
Collaboratively developed interview scripts, consent protocols, and survey logic.

This collaborative approach ensured shared ownership of the research process and helped the team internalize a user-centric mindset.

Phase 1: Team Enablement & Research Planning

To uncover real user needs, I designed and executed a dual research strategy:

In-Depth Interviews (17 users)

I conducted qualitative interviews with diverse entrepreneurs from sectors including food, health, education, and logistics. These revealed emotional barriers, workarounds, and core pain points:

“Tengo que admitir que soy desorganizado… si la herramienta me dice lo que tengo, lo que vendí, ya eso es un cambio.”
“I have to admit I'm disorganized... if the tool tells me what I have, what I sold, that would change everything.” — Eddy, Car workshop owner

Digital Survey (64 responses)

To validate patterns and quantify needs, I launched a regional survey. The insights confirmed the presence of three user archetypes and revealed that 83% considered digital tools essential, though 63% found them hard to use.

Phase 2: Mixed-Methods Research

Outcome

This work laid the strategic foundation for Ù-SuLé’s first MVP, grounded in empathy, real-world constraints, and behavior-based segmentation. It also helped the internal team grow from idea-stage startup to a research-informed design culture.

“Imagine if an app could replace my accountant, that would be amazing!”

— Juan, Physiotherapist

“Imagínate que si hay una aplicación que me ahorre el contador, ¡ya estaría buenísimo!”

Phase 3: Analysis, Synthesis & Strategic Framing

After collecting rich qualitative and quantitative data, I led a systematic synthesis phase to translate findings into actionable design decisions. My goal was to understand not just what users said, but what behaviors, attitudes, and constraints were shaping their choices, and how those patterns could inform the MVP’s design.

Step 1: Empathy Mapping

Before defining personas, I created empathy maps based on direct quotes and behavioral observations from interviews. These helped the team shift perspective, from "users as functions" to "users as humans."

Each map captured:

What users say (“I write everything down because I don’t trust systems”)
What they do (e.g. managing inventory with notebooks)
What they think (e.g , “I’ll mess things up if I try something new”)
What they feel (e.g. overwhelmed, cautious, curious, hopeful)

These empathy maps exposed emotional contradictions, such as users expressing curiosity about AI but feeling too intimidated to explore it.

“Yo quiero mejorar, pero no me quiero perder.”
“I want to improve, but I don’t want to get lost.”

They also helped visualize cognitive load, showing how people juggle tasks, decisions, and emotions daily, especially without digital support.

Step 2: Creating Behavior-Based Personas

Patterns from empathy maps revealed that user needs couldn’t be grouped by industry, age, or income alone. What mattered was:

Their comfort with technology
Their emotional response to change
Their level of operational chaos
Their attitude toward data and automation

This led me to propose a behavioral segmentation framework, categorizing users into three distinct archetypes based on how they act and feel, not just what they do.

Using the segmentation insights, I developed three representative personas:

The Early Adopter
Comfortable with technology, driven by optimization. Seeks integrated platforms and automation.
The Balanced Adopter
Practical, open to change if guided. Look for tools that are useful but not overwhelming.
The Traditionalist (differentiates in” Open “and “Resistant”)
Relies on manual methods. Skeptical of digital tools unless they mirror existing workflows.

Each persona included:

Core pain points and business contexts
Key emotional blockers and motivators
Visuals and quotes to humanize the experience
MVP feature implications

These personas became a core alignment tool, used by the internal team to test ideas and prioritize features based on empathy, not assumptions.

Step 3: Mapping Journeys

Once personas were established, I created customer journey maps for each one. These illustrated:

Stages of their day-to-day operations
Emotional highs and lows (e.g., frustration with manual accounting, anxiety about losing client information)
Breakdowns in current workflows
Points where a digital tool could bring immediate relief or long-term clarity

Phase 4: Cross-Data Validation

I used the survey data to validate qualitative insights, ensuring that each persona reflected real proportions of the user base. For example:

83% of users say digital tools are important, but 63% find them hard to use → strong rationale for layered onboarding
86% report data errors impacting decisions → priority to design for data reliability and simple reporting
Preference for WhatsApp and mobile-first access → design must focus on clarity and portability

I finalized this phase by developing a comparative analysis report that showed how survey trends confirmed (or challenged) interview insights, a key artifact for strategic alignment.