Project Management Tools for B Impact
Helping teams manage B Corp certification with a clear, collaborative project management workflow.
My Role
UX Research, UX Design
Team
Me, 4 Devs, PM
Timeline
2024-2025
The Context
Obtaining the B Corp Certification is a complex, multi-step process that can be overwhelming without the right tools.
Teams pursuing B Corp certification often juggle multiple tasks, due dates, and collaborators without a centralized way to track progress. This leads to confusion, missed deadlines, and frustration.
Our goal was to design an integrated project management experience within the B Impact platform that would help teams stay organized, aligned, and on track throughout their certification journey.
The Opportunity
A standards overhaul created the chance to redesign the platform around real user workflows.
In 2024, B Lab announced a major update: shifting the standards from a questionnaire to a binary comply/non-comply format. This required a complete redesign of the platform, opening the door to not only adapt to new standards but also address long-standing user frustrations.
By embedding project management capabilities directly into the certification workflow, we could reduce reliance on external tools and give teams the support they needed to manage progress collaboratively.
Research
We explored how teams manage certification to uncover real pain points and opportunities.
To understand user needs, we conducted stakeholder interviews with B Lab staff and user interviews with companies and consultants going through certification. From our interviews and concept tests, we mapped existing workflows and created user journeys for our primary users to identify key friction points and gaps in the current platform.
Our research highlighted several consistent challenges: users struggled with unclear task ownership, lacked visibility into overall progress, and had no reminders for upcoming deadlines. These insights directly informed the design of our MVP and helped prioritize features that would deliver the most impact for teams completing certification.
The Solution
Designing the platform to manage certification workflows and team collaboration in one place.
Status Tracking that Matches How Teams Work
overview
Let users mark each question’s status to manage progress and feasibility in a way that reflects how teams naturally work.
problem solved
Previously, teams used a single bookmark feature inconsistently or exported assessments to spreadsheets to track progress. This caused inconsistency, extra work, and made it difficult to understand overall status in-platform.
Managing Assignments and Due Dates in One Place
overview
Assign tasks to team members and add due dates to clearly indicate responsibility and timelines.
problem solved
Teams lacked a single source of truth for ownership and timing, forcing them to track tasks externally and risk missed due dates.
Project Management Dashboard to have a high-level overview
overview
Provide a visual overview of the entire assessment, showing task statuses, upcoming deadlines, and progress at a glance.
problem solved
Users had no way to see the big picture of their assessment, making it hard to prioritize work and manage team efforts efficiently.
Closing the loop on workflows
overview
Enable commenting and tagging directly on tasks to support team communication and follow-ups within the platform.
problem solved
Previously, teams couldn’t provide updates or coordinate directly in-platform. This forced workarounds, breaking the workflow and making it hard to track task completion from start to finish.
Impact
Early validation from users
- Status Tracking: 71% adoption within first month, with nearly half of surveyed users rating 5/5 for usefulness.
- Overall Platform: 80% rated the new experience easier to use than before.
Quotes from Our Users
“So much better than the last platform, more useful features.” - Existing B Corp
“Thank you for adding these awesome features to help us wrangle our B Teams 👏” — B Corp Consultant