WeClub
A light, Facebook-familiar app for women entrepreneurs across Mongolia, especially outside the capital.
You are now entering ( Problem )● 01 / 06
The support was in the capital.The women were not.
Women run most of Mongolia’s micro and small businesses (64%, by the Council’s own figures), yet those businesses tend to stay small. Women Entrepreneurs’ Council Mongolia offered training, mentoring and networking, but mostly in person in Ulaanbaatar, and women in the countryside rarely could travel to it.
Selling and networking happened in Facebook DMs. The Council asked our team for one place to learn, find a mentor and reach buyers, usable by people whose main digital reference point is Facebook, on whatever connection they have.
“How might we put training, mentors and buyers in one app, without overwhelming first-time app users or relying on perfect internet?”
You are now entering ( Who it’s for )● 02 / 06
A bakery CEO,a herder, a maker.
We built personas around three women at different points in the agricultural value chain. A city buyer who can’t find reliable suppliers. A herder in Gobi-Altai who needs a market without exploitative middlemen. A maker and stay-at-home mum who sells through Facebook DMs and needs help with marketing, tax and bookkeeping.
Their needs boiled down to four problems: limited market access, limited networking, a lack of reliable information, and the difficulty of proving quality through certification.
You are now entering ( Structure )● 03 / 06
Five doors,one search.
The MVP has five areas: Mentors, Classes, Market, Partnership and Networking. Learning and mentorship come first; the marketplace was planned as stage two. We left online lending out of the first release on purpose, because its paperwork was too complex for a first version.
Words and patterns close to Facebook, the platform everyone already uses, so the app doesn’t feel like new tech.
Simple layouts and little visual weight, for older phones and rural connections.
Learning, mentors and market access up front; news and updates as supporting tools.
Mentors, classes, members, groups and opportunities, all found from one place.
You are now entering ( The app )● 04 / 06
Learn, find a mentor,then sell.
Sign-up is split into short steps, asks whether you join as a mentor or a mentee, and ends by asking what you need help with. After that, every area uses the same cards, with a name, a short description and one clear action, and the same five tabs at the bottom. Mentorship comes in four kinds (creative, 1:1, group and peer), and members choose what suits them.
You are now entering ( Brand )● 05 / 06
A name,and a mark.
The brand came with the product. The explorations ran from geometric W shapes to dotted circles; the final mark is a sphere of dots in WeClub purple, with lockups for light, dark and colour backgrounds.
You are now entering ( Result )● 06 / 06
Signed off,then paused.
The Council signed off the design and we handed it over in 2021, but the project was paused for financial reasons and never shipped. If it had, I would have measured activation (finding a class or mentor in the first session), lesson completion, mentor match rate, supplier enquiries in the marketplace, and above all how many members came from outside Ulaanbaatar.
What I learned. Simple, familiar patterns did more for first-time users than any feature. Putting the most important areas first kept a big platform easy to move around, and working closely with the Council, with user testing along the way, kept us close to real pain points.
I was UX/UI designer, responsible for research, IA, flows, prototypes and the UI system, working with Batzaya Batsaikhan (project lead) and Namuunaa Saruul (UX/UI designer).
