Upkeep

Connecting residents to local on demand home service professionals
MOBILE APP • UX DESIGN • PASSION PROJECT
Overview
SolutionResearchDesign goalIdeationWireframeIterationsEvaluationReflections
OVERVIEW
About the project

Background: This is a passion project I worked on, alongside my summer 2020 internship, to design a better service for the home maintenance and repair tasks. This idea came to my mind from a couple of personal experiences while getting the chores done here in the US. My struggle to find the right expert for the home maintenance work inspired me to take it as a design challenge. Also, it was a part of the 12 week mentorship program conducted by Hoda Pedram—Product designer at Facebook. She encouraged me to apply my design skills to solve this problem and guided me with her valuable feedback and practical strategies.

‍Timeline: 5 weeks
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‍My Role: It is an independent project so I was responsible for the end-to-end design process from understanding the problem space with user research, ideating solutions, to prototyping UI and usability testing.

Tools used: Figma, Framer, Miro

THE CHALLENGE

It is difficult for residents to find the skilled workers that provide home maintenance and/or repair services, when they want to get the tasks done quickly.

THE SOLUTION

A delightful mobile app experience connecting vetted local workers to the home owners and tenants in a trusted and convenient way.

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS
Upkeep Mobile App
— Discover services near you

A simple questionnaire to report the basic information about the issue and achieve personalized results. Questions include description of the task, location where the problem occurred, appointment scheduler, budget and payment details. Users can go back to change the response, or skip the question.

Hire upkeeper of your choice —

Users can compare the results by using multiple criteria such as rating, work experience and level of expertise to make an informed decision. Also, Users can connect with an upkeeper to negotiate the price, conduct a free remote inspection and finalize the quote before hiring the service person.

— Get the task done and create team

A progress tracker provides the status of the work being done. Users can write a review for the service received. Also, they can add the upkeeper to their personal collection for quick access in future.

THE PROCESS
How did I arrive at the solution?
USER RESEARCH
Who are the users?

Whether in a shared space with family, friends or housemates, most home services can be used by multiple individuals. I decided to design a solution for homeowners and tenants living in shared houses, apartments and hostels. Some of the secondary users I considered are the property managers, real estate investors, hotel owners and house flippers.

Competitive Analysis

I examined 7 direct competitor products and services and reviewed 6 indirect competitors to understand the market landscape, trends and identify gaps between the available solutions and the user needs.
‍View competitors list

Survey

I conducted a survey to collect the quantitative data and short qualitative answers about the user needs and pain points. I received 38 responses from the people with age between 25 and 40.
‍View survey questions

Interviews

I conducted 7 semi-structured interviews with homeowners and tenants. I learned about the user behavior and product requirements.
View interview script

×
Interview script

  • How do you manage home repair and maintenance? 

  • Tell us about a situation when you sought some help regarding the home repair and maintenance. (Walkthrough step by step from request to completion)
  • How do you manage to complete those tasks with minimum help available?
  • What are the challenges you face?
  • What did you like about the services?
  • What is your general criteria while hiring a service person?
  • How do you ensure the task is done properly?
  • How do you decide the cost?
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List of direct competitors

  • Home Advisor

  • Thumbtack
  • Task Rabbit
  • Handy
  • Yelp
  • Angie's list
List of inirect competitors

  • Upwork

  • Fiverr
  • Fancy Hands
  • Facebook Marketplace
  • U-haul
  • Dolly
×
Interview script

  • How do you manage home repair and maintenance? 

  • Tell us about a situation when you sought some help regarding the home repair and maintenance. (Walkthrough step by step from request to completion)
  • How do you manage to complete those tasks with minimum help available?
  • What are the challenges you face?
  • What did you like about the services?
  • What is your general criteria while hiring a service person?
  • How do you ensure the task is done properly?
  • How do you decide the cost?
USER RESEARCH
The other side

Though I didn't focus on the design of the service provider's side, I did a preliminary research to get a deeper understanding of the context for the general maintenance and repair workers in the US. Below are some quick quantitative data points that highlight the opportunity to assist service persons with this app.

RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Key findings
Lack of trust
People tend to rely more on referrals through landlords, friends and neighbors than the misleading and confusing online search results.
High cost
People face an ambiguity in the expenses incurred and often get annoyed by the hidden costs.
Scattered information
Existing apps and websites do not provide a desired level of confidence and transparency to users.
Safety concerns
Hiring and inviting a stranger to the house involves risk. People prefer a validation criteria to check the authenticity and skill level.
PROBLEM SPACE
Pain points
From my research, I distilled 6 major pain points to be addressed by my design.
1. Variety in home service needs
2. Too much hassle to find a good service
3. Lack of personalization
4. Lack of safety measures
5. Time consuming process
6. High service cost
PERSONA
Understanding the residents
TASK FLOW
Identifying use case
DESIGN GOAL
Reframing the problem
How might we enable trustworthy, efficient and affordable home services for our customers in order to get the repair and maintenance tasks done at home?
PRODUCT GOAL
Value propositions
BRAINSTORMING
Sketching initial ideas
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
User flow diagram
WIREFRAMING
Iterating user interface
As I moved on to the interface design of the app, I wireframed all key UI screens and conducted an initial user testing session.
ITERATIONS
Exploring different layouts
Iteration 1
Issue
Few service persons to compare in a single fold
Iteration 2
Issue
Profile picture not big enough to get the clear identity
Iteration 3
Design decision
Bigger picture to provide more clarity about worker's identity
VISUAL DESIGN
High fidelity Design
PRODUCT TESTING
Evaluations & walkthroughs

I conducted informal and formal walkthroughs for the usability evaluations. Informal testing was done online by using a Figma desktop prototype & the formal testing was done in-person with the Figma mirror mobile app.

Informal online walkthroughs
‍I gave an informal walkthrough to 4 people soliciting their feedback. Evaluators were homeowners and tenants from the age group 25-40. I used Figma's prototype presentation feature to show them the designs. All four provided me with the valuable feedback for further exploration and design.

Formal in-person walkthroughs
‍I recruited three participants from my neighborhood to test out the high fidelity prototype. I asked each of them to complete a task—"Schedule a service with Emily Getz and fix the problem" that utilizes all features of the critical app flow and to think-aloud the experience, thoughts or ideas regarding the prototype.
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From the testing, I hoped to find answers for following questions:
1. Are the features of the app useful when users are hiring a service person?
2. Is this application easy to use? (Will the user know how to use this application)?
3. Are there any changes that need to be made to improve this application?

Key findings from testing
‍Overall, the participants were very positive toward the prototype. Most of them did not have issues in completing tasks and appreciated the simplicity of design. One participant mentioned that the app feels "inviting" and "makes me feel signing up for a legit service". Another participant mentioned the necessity of additional help feature when the emergency situation arises at night time. Furthermore, one participant asked a thought provoking question about the edge cases- "what if no one has the availability?" and "what if I want to repeat the same task again?"

CONCLUSION
Reflection & learnings
This project was a rapid skill check for me after the first year of my masters. I had fun during the process and three main takeaways from this project are:
Visual Design
‍UI Design decisions such as colors, typography, layouts and visual hierarchy is a crucial part of overall experience. Efficiently managing the limited real estate for a phone screen without compromising the functionality and aesthetic appeal is key. Remember form follows function.
Product thinking
Though I designed for a happy-path and just the residents side of the product, I considered the business aspects as well. I learned that along with attention to details, system-level thinking, edge-cases and long-term impact is as critical to consider.
End-to-end process
This project was a great opportunity to apply my design process to find a solution to a real problem. It improved my iterative and collaborative process. Also, I learned how to prioritize features that provide most value to users and not to solve everything at once.
If I had more time...

Points that are not covered in the case study and I would have loved to delve deeper into:

Thank you for reading!
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