Project Overview
House 2 Home is a services marketplace that connects millennial renters and homeowners to local home service professionals.
Challenge
While it is a two-sided platform, the counterpart experience of the product is on the home service professionals providing the services. The team had to focus on the consumer side of the platform.
Role: UX Researcher, UI/UX Designer, Team
Project Duration: 6 weeks
Tools: Sketch, Figma, Invision, Photoshop
Deliverables
01 Research Exploratory Research. Competitive Analysis
02 User Interview Plan and Results
03 Synthesis Persona, Problem Statement, User Stories, Design Principles
04 Sketches and Divergent Wireframes
05 Converging How-Now-Wow Matrix, Storyboard, Brainstorming, and Site Map
06 Solution
07 Usability Test Plan and Results, Recommendations
08 Reiterations
09 Annotated Wireframes
10 Next Steps
11 High-Fidelity Screens, Mood-board
The Process
The Problem Statement
The tech savvy millennial homeowner wants an easy and reliable way to conveniently compare quality home service professionals tailored to their home needs in order to make the most informed choice to provide safety, security and the best bang for their buck.
01 Research
My team and I began an in-depth research on the home service industry to get a better understanding of this market. While exploring, we found that the home services industry is worth billions, but millennial homeowners and renters alike report difficulty in finding reliable and affordable contractors that return on the value they promise.
Qualitative
• Homeowners with dual income, busy lifestyles with no time need a quick and easy way to find a professional-Contractor Digital Marketing Statistics
• The increase of smartphones sold to end users has allowed the rise of the home service market to increase through its positive influence on the online-demand services market -Home Advisor True Cost Repair
• The increase of smartphones sold to end users has allowed the rise of the home service market to increase through its positive influence on the online-demand services market to help. -Forbes
Quantitative
• 64% [ Searches for HVAC services happen on a mobile device ] -Blue Corona 2018
• 88% [ of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations ] -Search Engine Land
• 50% [ of loyal customers have left a company for a competitor who was able to stay more relevant and better satisfy their needs ] -Blue Corona 2018
Who are our competitors?
We found that our lead direct competitors in this market were Home Advisor, Home Depot while an approaching competitor was Amazon Home Services. These companies offer a wide range of services from licensed professionals while our indirect competitors Handy, TaskRabbit, and Groupon don’t necessarily require individuals to be licensed.
My team and I composed a detailed analysis of the 6 competitors by studying it features. We then compared 2 direct competitors and 1 indirect competitor and noticed some gaps. We were able to conclude:
• Transparency is lacking in the market place
• A need for a well established, vetting system to screen quality licensed professionals
• An option to pay virtually to save time
02 Understanding our Target Audience
User Interview Plan
My team and I used two methods to gather user insights. We created a google survey and conducted user interviews. The goals and objectives for our survey and user interviews were to gain a more clear understanding of the needs of homeowners and renters as they relate to hiring home service professionals. By broadening our results, we could better identify our target.
Our participants were:
• 11 user interviews Millennial’s (Ages between 24-40)
• Average household income between 75,000-150,000+
• Single-family homeowners, condo owners, renters, current homeowners and homebuyers
• 42 participants for Google Survey
Methodology
Users Interviews were done remotely through zoom sessions
Team Roles
Each team member conducted 2 interviews each. We had 11 interviews total.
Our Interviews
User 1
User 1 is a 30 years old business owner for a Salon Supply in Texas. He lives with his wife and dog Percy. They plan on buying a new home next year but maintain their house right now.
User 2
User 2 is a 30 years old Air Traffic Controller living in New York. He lives with his wife and recently bought their first house 2 years ago.
Key Takeaway and Insights
Many of the participants used virtual scheduling through an app.
Credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay and Amazon pay were among popular methods of payment.
People would rather pay through an app if they feel it is safe and trustworthy.
Among the services listed, home repairs were used more than home improvement projects.
Security and safety is an important factor for participants hiring home service professionals.
Most users emphasized the need for the ability to compare prices as well as reasonable pricing.
Defining our User
These are the methods we used to identify our User.
Affinity Diagram
Journey Map
03 Persona
Sarah V is a 30 years old Therapist, married with a child and living in Austin, Texas.
“I am always looking for ways to simplify the challenges in my life “
Problem Statement
The tech savvy millennial homeowner wants an easy and reliable way to conveniently compare quality home service professionals tailored to their home needs in order to make the most informed choice to provide safety, security and the best bang for their buck.
User Stories
As a busy professional…
I need a seamless way to schedule online.
As a consumer…
I want to be able to choose to pay after the work is done. I want whoever I hire to do the work right.
As a User…
who cares about quality experiences, I need each option to be ranked and reviewed by other people so that I can decide if it is worth going to
As a mother…
I want to be able to virtually connect with the home service professional before I make an informed decision.
Design Principles
Transparent - Exercising openness and honesty to cultivate trust and certitude with our users and professionals.
Reliable – Appropriately vetting all professionals and users to ensure professionalism and safety in all areas of our product.
Sustainable – Our product will be relevant to our users as well as uniquely tailored to our users.
Excellence – Our users and professionals will always receive the highest quality in both experience and final result.
Effortless – The approach of removing the friction that would turn customers away in order to earn customer loyalty
04 Sketches and Wireframes
6-8-5 Sketches
The strategy my team and I used to approach the problem statement was by doing divergent concepts. For my sketches, I created a comparing prices screen, browsing, online scheduling, payment and chat feature.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
05 Converging our Ideas
How-Now-Wow Matrix
Storyboard
Brainstorming
Site Map
06 Solution
Searching for a quality plumbing service, reading company information and reviews
Scheduling an Appointment
Receiving a Video Consultation
Viewing My Projects, viewing active projects and vetting screen and viewing saved Pros
Receiving invoice and completing payment
07 Usability Test Plan and Results
Usability Plan and Prototype testing
Analysis
After recruiting and screen, 8 participants tested. We based our results on 4 factors; average completion rate, average error rate, the average time to complete the task, and the average rate of level difficulty for each of the 9 tasks. Users found that level of difficulty was 5 (1 being the most difficult and 5 being the easiest) and a completion rate of 100%. Although, we received a positive outcome our takeaway was how do we decrease the error rate and time to complete tasks.
Key takeaways
How do we get to 0% error rate and how do we decrease the average time to complete tasks from 33 seconds to less than 10 seconds?
Recommendations for Improvement
According to the users, we compiled our user’s test and compiled these recommendations:
User’s were confused about bottom navigation and recommended labeling each icon.
User also recommended changing the explore icon to a home icon for less confusion
User recommended adding a GPS feature to track the professional before they arrive to your house
User recommended to add the service hours in the invoice to better track the hours worked
User recommends to add Google Pay to the list of payment options
Reiterations
08 Annotated Wireframes
09 Next Steps
According to the recommendations, my team would:
• Revisit and explore what users like such as re-discover Navigation, GPS included within the app, add service hours to invoice, ets.
• Reiterate on the changes and keep testing
• Create a High-Fidelity Prototype
10 High-Fidelity Screens
11 Moodboard
My team successfully created mid-fidelity screens that would be handed off to the UI team. Below, I created what my vision of the app would look like if I was part of the visual design.
