Overview
Mongolia's gig economy was growing fast but operating invisibly. Workers found part-time jobs through word of mouth and scattered social posts. Employers made hiring decisions based on gut feel and personal networks. +emp was built to formalize this market — connecting workers with nearby opportunities and giving employers a structured way to find the right people.
Problem
The informal nature of the market created friction on both sides. Workers couldn't surface relevant jobs near them, and employers couldn't reliably vet candidates. This led to lost income and unfilled shifts — a problem that compounded daily.
Three things needed to change:
- Job discovery had to be location-aware and real-time
- The experience had to work for users with varying levels of digital literacy
- Contracts and agreements needed to be simple enough to complete in-app
Process
Design Sprint
We kicked off with a 4-day design sprint. Day one was dedicated to establishing a long-term goal — become the biggest part-time job platform in Mongolia — and mapping the end-to-end user journey to identify where the biggest problems lived.
How Might We exercises surfaced a key tension: the app needed to feel simple for first-time users while being powerful enough for experienced gig workers managing multiple jobs. That duality shaped every design decision from this point forward.
Wireframing & Testing
From sprint sketches we moved into low-fidelity wireframes, tested with 7 Mongolian job seekers across age groups and work backgrounds. The biggest insight: users wanted to browse jobs the way they moved through the city — visually, on a map — not just through a list.
This led to the multi-view system: Map, Calendar, and List — each serving a different mental model of job searching. Navigation was restructured around a single principle: Find, Work, Reflect.
Visual Design
An earlier blue identity felt too corporate for a platform built for freelancers and gig workers. We rebranded to a primary green palette with gold accents — warmer, more approachable, and visually distinct in the Mongolian app market.
Contract management was simplified through sector-based templates. Instead of filling out forms from scratch, workers and employers selected from pre-built templates relevant to their industry — reducing friction at the highest drop-off point in the flow.
Outcome
Within six months of launch, +emp had 2,500 active users collectively earning ₮250 million — and saving an average of 4 hours per week compared to finding work through informal channels.