Mobile app for Douleutaras pros give them access to leads and messages from anywhere.
My role
Working closely with the Design, Product and Marketing team to scope and design a mobile app for Douleutaras pros. I worked on getting the business requirements, Design brief, User Research, Competition Analysis, Personas, Navigation type, Homepage and Card Design.
Outcome
Work is still in progress.
Overview
Douleutaras is a web platform that connects homeowners who are looking for contractors for their home projects (plumbers, electricians, carpenters etc) with reliable professionals that best correspond to their requests.
Douleutaras uses a matching algorithm and suggests the most suitable contractor to the homeowner.
Homeowners in Greece prefer to find contractors through Douleutaras because they want to find trustworthy, reliable professionals who are available and will do the job.
What's the problem we are trying to solve?
Pros (professionals) working for Douleutaras find it difficult to respond quickly to new leads and organise their time efficiently because the current web platform (it's called 'organiser') for pros is not user friendly and convenient while they are on-the-go. Customers love when pros get back to them quickly and pros need to be responding quickly to win customers.
The goal
Our primary goal was to create a mobile app for pros that will let them access new leads when on-the-go and communicate timely with customers. We would like pros to see the app as an everyday functional, valuable tool that would help them organise their time efficiently and improve their response time to customer requests.
As a future goal we wanted to evolve the app from a trusted tool to a meaningful partner and advisor that helps them increase their revenue and grow their business. Stephen Anderson’s UX Hierarchy of Needs heavily influenced our product strategy.
Stephen Anderson's UX Hierarchy of Needs
The business challenge
Our meeting with key stakeholders helped us to understand the business challenges. Together we identified risks and aligned on expectations and constructed a shared vision for the app.
The challenge for the business was to increase pros performance (fulfilment rate and revenue per job), reduce their churn and recruit new pros by creating a tool that will help them improve their response time, organise themselves and grow their business.
The risk
The risk was that our target group were not tech savvy people, therefore our app had to be intuitive but at the same time sophisticated enough to address our business goals.
The discovery phase
User research (personal interviews with pros and workshops with business stakeholders) revealed our users' pain points and what a mobile app would mean for them. Their motivations for using our platform (and a future mobile app) differed according to their professional goals and the size of their business. Talking to the users, it became apparent that what they wanted from the app is to give them an easy way to access their to-do-list for the day. Users were using their personal handwritten notebooks to organise their daily schedule. The challenge was to change their habit so that they gradually replace their notebooks with the app.
Insight
While growing their business and being competitive was important, organising their time effectively and responding quickly to customers while on-the-go was highlighted as the biggest pain point among our users.
Impact of mobile app to departments
Pros main pain points
Professionals' notebooks
User personas
We defined the two personas for whom we believe we can design a mobile app that will prove a valuable tool and advisor for their business.
What about competitors' apps?
Before designing our app we wanted to see what our direct and indirect competitors offer in terms of features and functionality, inform our design process and understand where our product stands in the market.
We studied the mobile apps Thumbtack Pro, HomeAdvisor Pro, AirBnB for hosts and Pulse (for Booking.com partners) and we identified best practices, commonalities and unique features that we could apply to our app.
Leads
Thumbtack Pro
Insights
Thumbtack Pro
HomeAdvisor Pro
Pulse
Pulse
Airbnb for hosts
Airbnb for hosts
Leads card
Thumbtack Pro
HomeAdvisor Pro
Airbnb for hosts
Pulse
What competitors' features could we use in our app and why?
Navigation
The first challenge was designing out navigation in an accessible and discoverable way while prioritising content. Having in mind our user, we needed something simple, clear and intuitive - we wanted to minimise effort. Our touch targets needed to be big and easily tapped (it came out that our users have huge fingers!)
After taking into account:
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Pros and cons of each navigation pattern (tab bar, hamburger, combo) in relation to user experience
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Our architecture, hierarchy of content and core features
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A navigation usability study from Nielsen Norman Group (on mobile phones people used the combo navigation in 86% of the cases – 1.5 times more than the hidden navigation)
... we decided to use the Combo navigation - a combination of bottom bar navigation with four options and a hamburger menu
Navigation usage as a function of device type
Combo navigation
Board or List view?
The first challenge was to decide the optimal layout for presenting the main job list to the pro: board (displays sections in columns vertically with an horizontal scroll) or list view (lists sections vertically). After taking into account the business requirements, and pros and cons of each layout and our user profile we decided mixing the two.
While horizontal scrolling allowed users to see the jobs in each category by just scrolling right (without having to change tabs) it wasn’t as intuitive as vertical scrolling. Also, we wouldn't be able to use gestures in each card (slide left and right).
Vertical scrolling
Horizontal and Vertical scrolling
What's the best way to present the jobs?
In order to decide how we would present the view of jobs we needed to understand how the pro structures his to-do-list for the day and prioritises his tasks. Is it by urgency, type of action (meeting, offer, phonecall) job profit or location proximity?
We came up with two versions, one card based and one list based and we analysed pros and cons of each. A/B testing showed us that users preferred Card view because it was easier for them to see the leads as 'tasks'.
Card view
List view
Cards
+ Each job gives a sense of quick task
+ Makes it easier to differentiate CTA in each card
+ Visually pleasing
- More scroll down to see same number of jobs
- Each card takes up more real estate when compared to list
Lists
+ Can fit more jobs on a page
+ Quicker way to get a glimpse of all jobs
+ Reduces cognitive load
What information shall we display in the job card?
Interviews with pros showed that in the current job card there were specific elements that needed improvement. The call to action and the job status weren't clear and there wasn't any indication of the job's urgency or customer's mood. The overdue jobs weren't prominent and also there wasn't a map indication. With this feedback in mind we designed the new job card.
Job card Before
Job card after
Card example_quote
Card example_map
Card example_overdue
Which job categories shall we display on the homepage?
In order to decide which job categories to display on home page we did some analysis on the current usage of the platform. We also took into account the value of each job category for the business and the pro.
Usage data
Usage data from the current platform showed that users visited mainly 'All jobs' (87%), 'New jobs' (5%) and 'Jobs for today' (4%) categories. There was a minor percentage who visited specifically the rest two categories ('Mary's suggestions', 'Next 7 days').
Business value
The business value was slightly more important for 'New Jobs' versus 'Jobs for today'. The value for the pro was equally important for both categories as his top priorities for each day is to win new jobs and complete his daily tasks.
'New jobs' and 'Jobs for today'
We also considered how many 'New jobs' and 'Jobs for today' the average pro sees on a daily basis to see how they will show on the mobile screen (we can show four to five job cards maximum on screen) and if vertical scrolling would be sufficient. An average pro receives around five 'New jobs' and five 'Jobs for today'. The maximum number of jobs he will see if he doesn't sign in the platform for three days is twenty. So vertical scrolling would be sufficient to see all of them (without having to scroll down kilometers!).
Based on the above analysis we reached the conclusion that that the pro needs easy access only to 'All jobs' and 'Jobs for today'. Therefore, we decided to display only these two categories on home screen and reduce the total number of tabs from five to two.
Job list_before
Job list_Tab all
Job list_Tab today
