iOS Native App for Requesting Home Services

The team was asked to create an iOS app for Members. This was based on the majority of users accessing the website on Apple mobile devices. The stakeholders were also highly motivated by the cachet of having an app in the App Store.

Given the desire for speed-to-market and the small size of our design team (just me at the time), we decided to engage with an outside agency to help create a UX Vision. I became part of their team of designers to deliver daily explorations and weekly reviews to stakeholders.

Project goal
  • Go big with a UX Vision that the team could work towards over time
  • Obtain qualitative user feedback on a prototype before coding
  • Launch with an MVP version that would be superior to the web experience for scheduling home services for both Member and In-Field Employee

The UX Vision

Discovery

Through a series of meetings, the new team learned everything there was to know about the target audience and what the product did to date. This included discussion about Personas, a walk-through of the product, branding, meetings with stakeholders and a summary of all past research.

Competitive Analysis

The team spent time looking at sites with similar offerings and interfaces that could be brought into the mix.

Divergence

Through a series of design exercises that included the larger team (executives, engineers, marketing, operations) we explored different directions and new ideas.

Selecting an Appropriate Framework

Once we had a list of ideas to explore, the design team narrowed down the organizational structure for the app and we got to work on creating a prototype. Over the course of this phase we used both Flinto and Protopie.

Testing and Improving

Recruiting from our existing Members who expressed an interest in providing feedback about the product, I facilitated a series of in-person moderated usability tests to get feedback about the prototype. We learned a ton from this testing and we were able to improve on the next iteration.

First Iteration

Scaling back to MVP

After the 9-week engagement with the outside firm ended, the core team decided on what the MVP feature set would be. In this case our focus was on improving the scheduling feature. This choice insured a vastly improved experience for Members and an increase in revenue for the business.

Building the Product

At this point we set up a team to build the first iteration of the app. This involved hiring mobile developers and building a backend framework to power the Service Request Flow.

Reality-Check

As the only designer on the team at this point, I needed to give the blue-sky vision a reality check. Some things weren't possible technically, so changes were necessary. Also, only the happy paths had been solved for. I needed to come up with variations of mockups and new flows to account for lots of edge-cases.

Lots of Testing

My last session of user testing was right before the COVID lockdown. I was able to safely go into AAA branches and receive feedback from Members using a phone that I carefully sterilized after each participant. The feedback I received was highly actionable and easy to collect.

Iterative Releases

Near the end of the project, the team only had a single Mobile Developer who was tasked with finishing it up. Through multiple releases we were able to gracefully gain App Store approval and have a beautifully functioning addition to the service available for download.