Case Study prepared by Dede Lopez
Case Study: The App that helps you have a green thumb
Plant App dasdskaod
Project Overview and Challenge
House to Home is a services marketplace that connects millennial renters and homeowners to local home service professionals. 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.
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.
Role and Time Duration
This project was completed in a collaborative team setting consisting of 2 other Designers.
My role was UX Designer.
The project was a time duration of 5 weeks completing tasks in 4 design sprints. Each week my team and I conducted presentations to share our design process.
Tools used: Jamboard, Xtensio,
The Process
Research on the Home Service Industry
My team and I began an exploratory 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
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
Competitors in the home service market
My team and I did a competitor analysis and these are the companies we did an evalutation on. 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.
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
Understanding our Target Audience
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.
Target Audience:
Our participants were:
• 11 millennial’s users (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. We had 11 interviews total.
Our Interviews
User 1
User 1 is a 28 years graphic designer living in Southern Grove, California.
User 2
User 2 is a 29 year old designer living in New York City. She lives with her husband and owns 30-40 plants.
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
While synthesizing our data through the method of affinity diagramming, we were able to conclude some findings such as our users:
• prefer to pay via online or already use an online payment method vs. paying on the phone or in person
• would prefer DIYed smaller projects or tasks but will hire a professional for bigger projects
Customer Journey Map
We created a custom journey map to show the challenges Sarah V. faces while searching and hiring a home service professional.
In Sarah’s case, she is new to the area and has experienced bad customer service before. This journey outlines the steps she took to hire a home service professional.
Narrowing down our 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 “
Identifying the users problem
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.
Creating User Stories to describe user wants to achieve
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 I can decide if it’s 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 of our Product
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
Divergent concepts
Sketches and Wireframing
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.
WireframesI then created mid-fidelity wireframes following the rough sketches. I iterated on a few designs.
Converging our Ideas
How-Now-Wow MatrixOur team chose to use the How-Now-Wow Matrix as an evaluation artifact in order to see what features were easy or difficult to implement. We also wanted to see what features were innovative and breakthrough ideas.
Storyboard Following the customer journey map that my team created, we created visuals of the user story through a storyboard
Ideation Artifacts
BrainstormingThrough the brainstorming session we created scenarios and created what the outcome would look like starting from when the user browses to find the home service professional
Site MapAfter applying different brainstorming methods, we were able to create the site map using what we learned about the user’s habit
Converging my concept sketch to a high-fidelity screen example
Solution
Solution 1: Searching for a quality plumbing service, reading company information and reviews
Solution 2: Scheduling an appointment for 11:30 on Friday, June 26, 2020.
Solution 3: Sarah being able to chat with the home service professional from Gal’s Plumbing and then receiving a video consultation from Gal
Solution 4: Sarah being able to view her invoice and then paying with Apply Pay after the home service professional has completed the service
Usability Test Plan and Results
Analysis
After recruiting and screening, 8 participants were tested. We based our results on 4 factors using the likert scale using:
average completion rate
average error rate,
average time to complete the task,
average rate of level difficulty for each of the 9 tasks
Users found that level of difficulty was 5 (1 being very difficult and 5 being very easy) 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.
Average Rate chartKey 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
Annotated Wireframes
Next Steps
I designed the messaging, video consultation mid-fidelity screens along with profile so I annotated for those sections. To view my other teammates annotations, click below:
According to the recommendations, my team would:
• Revisit and explore what users like such as re-discover Navigation,
• GPS included within the app. This feature would be similar to Uber and Lyft. This feature would allow the consumer to be prepared for the arrival of the home service professional.
• Add service hours to invoice, etc. Another step we would take is adding service hours to the invoice. Since the wages of professional work per hour. This would allow both consumers and contractors to keep aligned with payment.
• Reiterate on the changes and keep testing
• Create a High-Fidelity Prototype
High-Fidelity Screens
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.
Splash Screen
Scheduling Appointment
Homepage
List of Plumbing Services
Invoice Alert
Video Consultation CallMoodboard
Click to enlargeMy Thoughts
I learned that although there were big competitors in the home service market such as Home Depot, Home Advisor, Amazon Home Services, we were able to find a gap. I found that these companies did not all have the three major factors that our users were looking for as screening/vetting, online payments, and online scheduling. Exploratory research on the six competitors was highly necessary, and being able to find trends such as solar panels and the use of eco-friendly materials were valuable insights that we added to home service categories.
Users such as Sarah are busy professionals, and mothers who are looking for a simple way to search for a home service professional in their area. They want a simple way to message the professional, do a video consultation, schedule online, and complete payment through different payment methods. Users like her value security, convenience, and professionalism.