The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) has launched and is continuing to develop the BuyDetroit online procurement portal. The overall goal of the procurement portal is to bring more Detroit-based, diverse, small businesses into the arena of procurement. In addition to the features on the portal which support procurement processes, the BuyDetroit portal will also contain an educational curriculum to prepare inexperienced suppliers to participate in the procurement process.
Our team’s work begins with the educational aspect of the BuyDetroit portal. Our team was tasked with designing the experience for the educational modules in the portal while considering the needs of users on both sides of the procurement process.
Before designing, our team conducted survey and interview research with small suppliers who will be the primary users of the educational modules as well as Buyers Council members who are helping fund the BuyDetroit portal and are invested in seeing suppliers learn and succeed. Next, our team conducted research on the platform on which the portal lives and therefore where the educational modules will live called Connect Space. This part of our research was imperative in understanding the constraints under which the educational module would be designed.
