CleanTeam App
Oversaw the booking process for an on-demand cleaning service app using user research, information architecture, UI and prototyping.
Challenges
MINIMUM WORK, MAXIMUM VALUE
My client pushed for all these integrated features such as CRM, contracting, email marketing, admin portal, etc. This was an unrealistic expectation with a minimal budget, a short amount of time, and immense scope. I broke down my timeline and explained my process to convey the value of proper research and testing.
We were able to tackle the challenge and validate ideas within a short amount of time and limited budget by using a design sprint process.
Understanding the Problem
At the outset of the project I didn’t have a clear mission or specific goals for the booking experience. Without pre-existing insights, I needed to understand the process.
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What is the role of the business?
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Are clients looking through a list of available contractors?
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Or will CleanTeam provide their staffing and scheduling?
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Are you operating business as the matchmaker or agency?
Defining the Problem
The client decided to provide the staffing and scheduling much like how an agency operates because having trust worthy maids was a top priority. In speaking with my client, I drew in the attention that people had no time to indulge in executing the daily house or commercial cleaning chores as they were preoccupied with other more critical tasks. Finding an affordable, reliable and trustworthy cleaning service has always been very difficult to outsource and align with a busy schedule.
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Lack of high-quality maids
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Flexible scheduling
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Easy-to-use booking and payment processing system
These are essential issues that users find difficult to hire a cleaning service that fulfills these requirements.
Setting Goals
The client decided to provide the staffing and scheduling much like how an agency operates because trustworthy maids were a top priority. In speaking with my client, I drew in the attention that people had no time to indulge in executing the daily house or commercial cleaning chores as they were preoccupied with other more critical tasks. Finding an affordable, reliable and trustworthy cleaning service has always been very difficult to outsource and align with a busy schedule.
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Lack of high-quality maids
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Flexible scheduling
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Easy-to-use booking and payment processing system
These are essential issues that users find difficult to hire a cleaning service that fulfills these requirements.
Gathering Insights
User Surveys & Interviews
Now that we have a clear goal in mind, I reached out on social media and slack to conduct user surveys and found 16 people willing to participate.
With these 16 participants I:
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Recruit for user interviews and testings.
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Contacted both who have used cleaning services in the past.
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Those who work full time, have families, or students to uncover common pain points and motivations
Normally, I take a week to gather as many participants for user surveys and interviews but because of time constraints, I did this within 3 days.
We focused primarily on why people hire cleaning services.
Top 3 Responses
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No time, I’m a full time student or I work full time.
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I have a busy family life.
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I simply don’t enjoy cleaning or chores.
Common Pain Points
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Finding trust worthy maids (no shows)
- Flexible Scheduling
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Easy to book online and compare between different options and rates.
Additional Insight
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The average size household is 3
- The average size home is 3BR
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On Average, participants clean their homes once a month.
In order to empathize with the different types of users, I defined our target audience, which are based purely on insights gathered with user surveys and interviews. These serve as a starting point to reflect on the needs and challenges of the user and possible solutions that can be considered later in building the information architecture.
Demographics
Age Range: 30-50 years old
Common Job Titles: Stay at home mom, Business Owner, Entrepreneur, Student
Key psychographics
Values: time, family, peace, sleep
Likes to: spend time with friends and family, read a book, study, self-development
Wants to: have every aspect in life in sync and balanced.
Challenges
What is holding them back from achieving their goals? They are too busy keeping up with a laundry list of things that need to be done.
Personas
After defining the target audience, I created a user persona. To prevent any bias, I create a minimum of 2 personas.
Bio
Jan is a project manager who live in Florida. She is a career driven person and sometime in seasons where she has too much on her plate. She tries her best to manage everything but she is not able to do so because she lacks in time. Stephanie strives for a healthy, balanced life and needs someone to help her do the household chores so that she can focus on each tasks, goals, and spend time with her family
Jan Smith
Demographic
40 years old
Full Time Project Manager
Family - Married - 2 children
Tech Savvy - uses mobile
Motivations
Jan is motivated when things are well balanced and running smoothly in all aspects of her life. She is ambitious and competitive in everything that she sets herself to accomplish. Her family’s support motivates her to press forward and be a good example to her children.
Goals & Opportunities
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Wants to take more time out for herself
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Be a present wife and mother
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Self Develop her skills in her career
Frustrations
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Punctuality
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Not being able to keep organized
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Hygiene and cleanliness
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Not being able to spend time with her family
Bio
Paul is in his fifth year owning his own business. He loves to be around people and is the go to person when issues arise with his strong leadership skills.. Paul is always learning new skills and self developing by attending seminars on business and communication skills. Paul is self taught and didn't earn a degree in business.
Paul Garcia
Demographic
32 years old
Small Business Owner
Single - no children
Tech Savvy - uses mobile
Motivations
Paul is a natural born leader who is caring to give opportunities to those who go above and beyond. He is an hard worker and loves to tackle down challenges and look back at his accomplishments.
Goals & Opportunities
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Wants to create opportunities for others
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Smooth and seamless navigation
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Personalized information
Frustrations
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Unclear and unable to find things
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Not being able to keep organized
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Multiple steps
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Busy schedule
Empathy Map
Typically, after doing a persona, I like to do an empathy map to make sure I don’t approach my research with any one sided approach. With that, I was able to gain a deeper insight into our persona, Jan, and capture who she is. I discovered what drives someone like Jan, uncover the user needs, and understand their behaviors which ultimately guides my design into something meaningful, innovative.
Given that the booking process can be slow and tedious, and now that I refined the target audience, I wanted to understand how to structure the touchpoints before creating the most efficient and effective process before diving into user flows.
Key Takeaways:
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Minimizes Options: Promote sensible and straightforward way-finding.
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Promotes Clarity: Engaging interfaces with intuitive controls.
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Consistency: Easily recognizable elements across the user’s experience.
Narrowing the scope with user stories
Although my client had many great ideas for her start-up cleaning business, there were constraints of designing this mobile app to maintain budget and time frame. I had another meeting with the client to ensure we were moving forward to start with a completed booking system for the app. I extracted these insights from our user interviews and surveys. This also helped me list out all the features from high to lowest priority for my client to have a visual a “roadmap” of features that can eventually be added on.
Users wanted to be able to: (Highest Priority)
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Seamless onboarding/account set up
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Easy to book and add custom preferences
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An effortless and clear check out process
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Compare different options and rates
User Flow
Even though this was an extra step in my design process, it prevented me from any significant errors that would result in more time to correct and redo. User flows help me acknowledge each step of the onboarding and booking process before proceeding straight into the wireframes.
Sketching
I quickly went into sketching to test the booking process based from the user flow. This was a helpful starting point for the design phase, and after that I discovered that there was an error from the user flow.
Key Findings
In order for the users to be able to compare different option and rates, they needed to create their property/location first before selecting cleaning service types and add ons. Pricing depended on the size of your property when you create your account. This was discovered after doing quick sketch prototypes.
Digital Wireframes & User Testing
I translated these sketches into Figma and created a low-fidelity prototype. I used the prototype to begin basic usability testing as well as get feedback from my client.
Key Takeaways
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Users had to choose service type and click again to “next” to proceed, and this was an unnecessary step. Instead, it will prompt them to question the booking process when users choose their service type.
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Unnecessary pop-up message window that users had to read on the bottom of the screen. It caused an unanticipated block in the flow for the users to begin the onboarding process.
Prototyping & Usability Testing
To evaluate the booking system on the CleanTeam mobile app, I relied on qualitative information using eight usability tests. Although users could create their accounts more quickly, they continued to struggle with the checkout process.
Specific tasks that I tested:
#1 Create a profile
#2 Complete a booking
Problem
Discussions with users revealed that often, the checkout swipe up feature was difficult to navigate to confirm booking, it was possible after a couple of attempts but was not an obvious choice. For user to confirm booking, they needed to swipe up. From there I needed to redesign a more efficient and clear check out process.
Solution
Although it gave a more modern approach, it wasn’t functional and straightforward. I continued with the swipe-up feature; however, the CTA button was on the main page.
When testing the final prototype, 4/4 people successfully created a profile and completed a booking, and effectively met all of the goals.
