Solysit - A Service Marketplace

Solysit

Overview

This user experience was designed for a project in DES 3131- User Experience in Design.

This assignment was designed to give students a full understanding of UX Research and Design.

This project took 7 weeks between September and October of 2019.

Role

Projects were assigned individually. I had the following responsibilities for this project:

  • User Research
  • UX Design
  • Prototyping
  • Usability Testing

The Prompt

Design an experience that is centered around kindness

After a couple brainstorming exercises I came up with the idea for an elderly-assistance app. While I was making a user empathy map I realized that what I was designing could expand out to a much wider audience than just elderly people. Finally I settled on the idea of creating a service market place.

Solysit is an app that connects users who need services like yardwork, maintenance, or cleaning, with users who are looking for work or supplemental income.

Competitive Analysis

I centered in on three competitors to analyze: Craigslist, TaskRabbit, and Upwork.

These websites did a lot of really nice things:

  • Both Upwork and TaskRabbit seemed trustworthy
  • Both Upwork and TaskRabbit had nice progress bars
  • Only Craigslist allowed non-posters to access the full extent of their experience without signing in

They also had a few faults:

  • Signup prompts popped up after making it through each process
  • The entire proces of posting a job takes too long
  • Craigslist in particular feels a little untrustworthy

Craigslist is primarily for peer to peer sales, their service component is therefore peer to peer. Both Upwork and TaskRabbit are geared towards connecting users to professionals. What I hoped to build with Solysit was a peer to peer service, with the same user base as Craigslist, while maintaining the same level of trust that services like Upwork and TaskRabbit thrive on.

User Personas

After settling on a service marketplace, I created two personas to ensure my designs stayed user focused. David represents a user that is looking for work and Vanessa represents a user that is looking for help.

User Problem

Through a competitive analysis and creating user empathy maps, I focused on three common pain points for users:

  • Lengthy sign up processes
  • Not being able to trust other users
  • Lack of transparency between services and their users

Accounting for these insights, I set out to develop an experience that

  • Ensures user tasks are quick and easy
  • Develops trust amongst its users
  • Facilitates complete access for guest users

User Flow

I started with a user flow to map the ideal user experience. Given the constraints of this project I had to keep the flow and the overall design short and simple.

Drafting Wireframes

Since I included simple illustrations for each screen in my user-flow, I had a good idea on how I wanted the first set of wires to look.

Digitizing Wireframes

Next I digitized my wireframes. At this point in my project I was working on a Dell XPS laptop and did not have access to Sketch. I used a program called Lunacy to create sketch files for my wireframes. This high-fidelity draft is where I introduced a lot of copy. I had 5 screens at this stage here is how they looked:

Clickable Prototype

After a peer review and a lot of helpful feedback I redesigned my screens for a clickable prototype. Using Invision I drafted a clickable prototype to present to users during my user testing.

Here is a link to the final clickable prototype.

1 / 5
Find Work Flow
2 / 5
Find Help flow
3 / 5
Menu Flow
4 / 5
Review Flow
5 / 5
Results Popouts

Moderated User Testing

I performed three rounds of user testing and redesigned portions of Solysit after each round.

Round One: Moderated User Testing

In this round of user testing I interviewed college students in Coffman Memorial Union at the University of Minnesota.

Here are some of the takeaways from this round of user testing:

  • Users understood exactly what Solysit was from the hero page
  • Users understood exactly how to find work
  • Users struggled to understand how to post a request
  • Users enjoyed the overall simplicity
  • Users were confused by the rating system I had implemented

Round One: Adjustments

After this round of testing and at the suggestion of my Professor McLean Donnelly, I purchased a Macbook Pro and rebuilt my screens in Sketch.

Some of the improvements included:

  • Clearer distinctions between the two main flows: “Get Paid” and “Get Help”
  • Two screens added to the flows to get some filtering or onboarding information from users
  • Updated copy to mitigate confusion in user testing
  • Clearer representations of user ratings
  • Removal of “social media” features such as the trending feed and likes and comments on postings

Round Two: Moderated User Testing

In this round of user testing I interviewed customers at a Spyhouse coffee in downtown Minneapolis.

Here are some of the takeaways from this round of user testing:

  • Users were a little confused about the homepage saying “Work for your friends”
  • Users navigated the interface with significant ease
  • Users were unsure how long each flow would take
  • Users felt that the interface was very user friendly and intuitive
  • One user wanted to be able to click "use their current location" rather than enter it

Round Two: Adjustments

After this round of testing I felt pretty confident in my designs and made fewer adjustments than the first round of testing:

  • Changed the homepage to say “Work For Each Other”
  • Added a “Use current location button”
  • Added a Navigation bar to give users some idea where each flow was going
  • Added a Map to give users another way to view the results

Round Three: Moderated User Testing

In this final round of user testing I interviewed two customers at Dogwood Coffee and three customers at Spyhouse coffee in Northeast Minneapolis.

Here are some of the takeaways from this round of user testing:

  • Users new exactly what Solysit was used for
  • One of the users struggled to understand that the “Get Help” button was used to make a post
  • One user brought up an edge case where they would be making a post for work that is different than their location
  • Users found Solysit to be a quick and easy way to request help from their peers

Round Three: Adjustments

After this round of testing I felt that Solysit was close to its final state making only the following adjustments:

  • Changed the “Get Paid” and “Get Help” buttons to say “Find Work” and “Find Help”
  • Added a spot to enter a Zip Code into the “Add Content” screen.

Solysit's Success

At the beginning of this project I set out with the goal to gain a comprehensive understanding of UX design. This project has certainly helped me do that:

  • I created user personas and learned to design with the use in mind
  • I gained experience with Sketch, InVision, and Whimsical
  • I designed a user experience that users found intuitive and could see themselves using
  • I learned that I enjoy designing user experiences
By every measure I set for myself, this project was a success.

Takeaways

I learned a lot about User Experience Design throughout this project. Here are the three key takeaways that will strengthen my designs in the future:

  1. Thought Over Fidelity

    When I digitized my wires, I spent more time focusing on how my designs looked rather than how they functioned. I spent a lot of time redesigning my experience after the first round of user testing because of this.

  2. Organize Early

    When I created my first digital wireframes I didn’t take the time to name and group all of the constituent elements for each screen. When it came time to adjust my designs I wasted a lot of time differentiating between “Rectangle copy copy copy” and “Rectangle copy copy copy copy”.

  3. Thorough User Research

    For this design I did not perform qualitative interviews with potential users before developing my user experience. I think this would have helped me better understand user pain points and create a design more distinguishable from other service marketplaces.