Brink — User Research Document

What led to this research

Brink is a two-sided talent marketplace in the Netherlands, connecting independent professionals (ZZP'ers — freelancers, contractors, interim specialists) with partner organizations for project assignments. It is evolving from a structured listings board into a modular, intelligence-driven marketplace — AI inside discovery, matching and decision-making rather than bolted on the side.

New professionals sign up — usually after seeing a relevant assignment — but a large share never become "assignment-ready" (profile complete, rate set, identity and compliance verified, visible to partners). The drop-off isn't at the front door and isn't at the very end. It's in the messy middle, where the platform is currently silent and form-driven. This research investigates that middle on the professional (consumer) side.

Source: 00-brief.md §1–2

The design problems we're trying to solve

Understand why professionals stall between sign-up and assignment-ready, in their own words — separating real blockers from assumed ones — so we can move the activation funnel without sacrificing profile quality or trust. Specifically:

• Locate where effort is disproportionate to reward, and why people abandon there.
• Understand the rate-setting decision and what makes it hard.
• Learn how professionals react to compliance, and when it feels wrong.
• Establish what would make them trust — or distrust — AI doing parts of this for them.

Source: 00-brief.md §2–3, 01-research-plan.md (goal)

What the research set out to answer

1. What actually happens between signing up and either finishing or abandoning the profile?
2. Where does effort feel disproportionate to reward, and why?
3. How do professionals decide their rate — and what makes that hard?
4. How do they react to compliance requests (KvK, BTW, ID, insurance), and when?
5. What would make them trust (or distrust) AI doing parts of this for them?
6. What does "this was worth it" feel like — when does activation emotionally land?

Source: 01-research-plan.md (research questions)

KPIs toward the end goal

The activation funnel we are trying to move, and the single number that fuses both success events — the platform's (ready) and the user's (a match).

Source: 00-brief.md §2 (funnel), 12-product-goal-success-metrics.md

The steps we took

• 6 × 45-minute semi-structured interviews, remote — one unusable (audio loss), leaving 5 transcripts.
• Think-aloud walkthrough of the current onboarding where the participant still had access.
• Single screening criterion: independent professional in NL who created (or seriously attempted) a Brink profile in the last 6 months.
• Analysis: affinity mapping across transcripts → recurring tensions → insights. Each insight must trace to at least two participants to count as a pattern, not an anecdote. Quotes are tagged by participant so claims stay auditable.

Source: 01-research-plan.md (method, analysis approach)

Who we spoke to, and why

Sampled deliberately across the experience spectrum — not only people who churned — to avoid confirmation bias. Includes people who succeeded and one who left for a competitor.

Source: 01-research-plan.md (sampling)

What we asked participants

A semi-structured moderator guide — a spine, not a verbatim script — followed by the think-aloud protocol. Every block ties to a research question above. The full guide is in 01a — Interview & Think-Aloud Script; the spine:

Source: 01a-interview-script.md

Sanne, mid-onboarding

One suspended moment: profile half-built, the assignment she wanted still in her head, cursor blinking in the rate field. Mehmet's divergence is noted in italics — the activation gap is the gap between these two minds.

Sanne and Mehmet fail at the same wall for mirror-image reasons — she resents doing work she's already done, he's paralysed doing work he's never done — and both keep going only if the platform shows the payoff before, not after, the hardest effort.

Source: 05-empathy-map.md

Ranked by severity × frequency

Source: 06-pain-points.md

Who we're designing for

Source: 04-persona.md

Capabilities the experience must provide

Format: As [persona], I want [capability], so that [outcome] — each traced to evidence, prioritised with MoSCoW. The spine taken into prototyping is B1 + A1 + C1, governed by F1.

Source: 08-user-stories.md

The current, broken journey

Sanne sees a healthcare-logistics interim assignment, clicks apply, and is told to create a profile first. The emotional curve shows exactly where it leaks.

Today the journey asks for maximum effort at the exact moment motivation is lowest and reward is invisible — so it loses two-thirds of people at a single rate field they face alone.

Source: 07-journey-map.md

What we're solving, precisely

New independent professionals abandon Brink's activation flow in the "messy middle" — between starting a profile and becoming assignment-ready — because the experience front-loads duplicated effort, forces a high-stakes rate decision with no reference, and withholds any visible reward (a real match) until the very end. Only 34% of those who start a profile reach assignment-ready, and the largest single drop-off is at the rate step. The path from interested to active is built backwards — effort first, reward last.

In one line: Brink loses two-thirds of willing professionals in activation because it asks the most, at the moment people have the least motivation, for a reward it shows them last.

Root cause: the funnel is designed around the platform's success event (profile completion) instead of the user's success event (a relevant match). Everything downstream inherits that inversion.

Source: 10-problem-statement.md

What we believe will fix it

We believe that if we re-sequence activation around the user's success event — drafting the profile from an imported CV/LinkedIn, giving transparent editable rate guidance, and surfacing a relevant match preview at ~halfway readiness — then activation will rise from 34% to ≥50% and time-to-ready will fall from 9 days to under one, because we remove the three causally-linked blockers at the points the journey map shows them biting.

Source: 11-hypothesis-value-proposition.md

The promise to the user

Brink gets independent professionals from sign-up to a real, relevant match in minutes — not days — by turning profile-building into a guided draft you edit instead of a form you author, removing rate anxiety with transparent market guidance, and proving there's work for you before asking for the boring stuff.

Positioning: The only marketplace that uses AI to pull your first match forward — for complex, multi-sector independent work — while keeping you the author of how you're presented.

Source: 11-hypothesis-value-proposition.md

How we'll know it worked

Increase the share of new professionals who become assignment-ready and see their first relevant match within 7 days — from 24% to 40% of sign-ups — without reducing profile quality or trust.

North Star — 7-day activation rate: % of sign-ups who reach assignment-ready and receive ≥1 relevant match within 7 days. It fuses both success events, so it can't be moved by gaming completion alone.

Source: 12-product-goal-success-metrics.md