Signal Desk - AI-powered
pricing system for freelancers

Overview

Freelancers often struggle to price projects confidently.
Pricing decisions depend on many variables - scope,
experience, urgency, client type, risk, and market benchmarks
- yet most freelancers rely on intuition or fragmented spreadsheets.

SignalDesk is a SaaS platform designed to help freelancers create
accurate project pricing, define deliverables, protect themselves legally,
and ensure profitability using market-driven insights and guided workflows.

My Role

UX Research, Product Strategy, UX Architecture, Interaction Design, Concept Prototyping

The Problem

Freelancers face three core challenges:
‍
‍Lack of reliable market benchmarks
Pricing decisions are often based on incomplete research or guesswork,
reducing confidence when presenting quotes to clients.
‍
‍Difficulty defining project scope and deliverables
Undefined boundaries often lead to scope creep, unpaid revisions,
and unprofitable projects.

‍Legal and contractual uncertainty
Many freelancers lack experience drafting protective legal clauses,
exposing them to business risk. Pricing System for freelancers.
These challenges result in underpricing, lost revenue,
and inefficient project workflows.

Competitors Research

The research analyzed three main solution categories:

‍Freelance marketplaces (e.g., project listing platforms)
Provide only average price indications based on public projects
- useful for general direction but insufficient for personalized pricing decisions.

‍Rate calculators (profession/region-based)
Offer more structured benchmarking but still lack project-specific
variables such as client complexity, risk, or deliverable scope.

‍Community pricing spreadsheets
Widely used despite being informal, demonstrating that current tools
do not fully solve the pricing problem.

‍Key insight:
Existing solutions provide data, but none provide
‍decision-support workflows tailored to the freelancer’s
real project context.

User Research

The research phase included:‍

Core Insights

- Many freelancers rely on intuition due to lack of trusted benchmarking data.
- Deliverables and scope boundaries are the primary source of project profitability loss.
- Legal protection is often ignored because drafting clauses is difficult and time-consuming.

These insights highlighted that the pricing problem is not just numeric -
it is structural, procedural, and confidence-driven.

Personas

Nely Levin

- 7+ years experienceWorks with SaaS companies
- Strong design expertise but dislikes administrative pricing work
- Needs quick, structured quotes with legal clarity
- Concerned about scope creep and unpaid revisions

Daniel Amer

- 3+ years freelance experience
- Works on long-term complex projects
- Unsure whether his rates match the market
- Needs benchmarking, contract protection, and structured deliverables planning

Solution

A SaaS platform for freelancers combining:

Core Features
- Smart pricing engine (market data + personal inputs)
- Deliverables & scope definition system
- Proposal & contract generator
- Profitability tracking

Premium Features
- AI market analysis
- profitability forecasting
- legal clause library
- real-time pricing recommendations
- benchmarking vs peers

User Flow (Example)

- Select service
- Define client type
- Compare market benchmarks
- Set pricing (manual or recommended)
- Define scope & deliverables
- Add legal clauses
- Generate proposal

Information Architecture

The system includes:
- pricing module
- clients & projects
- proposal builder
- templates library
- legal clauses
- profitability calculator
- AI insights

Design Concepts

1. Master–Detail Dashboard
Business as a financial system:
- profit
- margins
- market gap
👉 Solves: lack of visibility into performance

‍2. Cards + Free Search
Decision-support interface:
- combines market data, risk, and profitability
👉 Solves: uncertainty in pricing

3. Calendar View
Projects as a timeline:
- workload
- deadlines
👉 Solves: time and workload chaos

Screens

Main Screen

Benchmarking (branding service) - first step

Benchmarking - AI Reccomendations

Definig Project Scope

Quote Draft