Understanding how creatives create proposals

As a designer, I faced challenges navigating the business side of design. In university, I learned all aspects of design, but the school did not prepare me for the business of quoting clients, writing proposals, and determining service fees. It took me many years to understand how to create quotes and proposals accurately.

Creating quotes is often a tedious and lengthy process for designers. First impressions start with the proposal, which can be a quick but plain Excel quote or a time-consuming, beautifully designed Adobe document. I sought an efficient way to create professional, visually appealing proposals tailored for creatives, but found nothing suitable.

Current solutions are outdated, generic, and lack industry-specific templates — especially for the Latin American (Spanish) market. This leads to uninspiring and time-consuming proposals. It is also essential to include clear project boundaries so clients understand the scope and execution of the work.

This UX research aims to understand the challenges and needs of emerging creatives and freelancers in Latin America when creating quotes and proposals. The focus is on improving efficiency and effectiveness for those early in their careers.

I began by searching for services that offered quoting and invoicing — primarily in Spanish — while keeping an eye out for notable English-language solutions that could be relevant.

GetBillage — Complete invoicing with intuitive workflows, clean design, and full mobile support. Sage — Advanced accounting features and professional interface suited for power users. Debitoor — Combines invoicing and expense tracking in a simple, responsive dashboard.

Tools like FacturasCloud, AcentoCoop, Canva, Anfix, Billin.net, and Holded offer a mix of functionalities with varying degrees of design appeal and user interaction efficiency. Canva is unique — primarily a graphic design tool with invoicing functionality, visually appealing but less optimized for invoicing tasks.

Tools such as GetQuipu, ContaSimple, Nomo, TPVGratuito, ContaMoney, Gespymes, and ContaAutonomos have lower rankings due to outdated designs, less intuitive workflows, limited mobile support, and inadequate help resources.

Objective: Comprehensively understand the current quoting practices and pain points of creatives in Latin America, and validate a proposed web application for quoting and proposals.

Target audience: Professionals aged 20 to 45 — designers, creatives, musicians, freelancers, and gig workers in Latin America.

I aimed to select creatives or freelancers familiar with proposal creation. I collected essential details like experience, specialization, and location to ensure they met the criteria.

To ensure consistency across all interviews, I developed a structured questionnaire focusing on understanding the creative professionals' workflow, challenges, and needs in their proposal creation process.

The empathy map delves into the creative professional's mindset, revealing key insights about their thoughts, feelings, and motivations. This visualization helps the team design with genuine understanding of our users' needs.

To bring the user research to life, I crafted a day-in-the-life scenario of a video editor, synthesized from in-depth interviews and feedback. This narrative serves as a compelling window into the typical user's experience, helping stakeholders understand the real-world context and challenges the solution needs to address.