Easy and fast way to find your next work spot
PostUp
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Designing the fastest and the easiest way to find the perfect working spot.
A design sprint is a 5-day process for answering critical business questions through design, as well as prototyping and testing ideas with customers. This project was a modified GV design sprint. GV design sprint is typically conducted by a team to promote collaboration, but for this project, I conducted it solo. The design brief and research data were provided by Bitesize UX via Springboard UX Career Track course.
What is PostUp
PostUp is a new startup where freelancers and remote workers share tips and advice.
The Problem
PostUp has an active community of users and recently they have seen a lot of discussions around people having a hard time finding good public places to work from.
The Goal
PostUp wants to design a mobile app that will make finding a good pre-existing public workplace easier for remote workers. The goal is to make the process of finding the workplace simple, easy, and fast, so people can save time on searching and spend more time getting their work done.
My Role
As a solo UX designer, I focused on the following:
Synthesizing research
Establishing goals
Ideating solutions
Storyboarding
Wireframing
Creating high fidelity prototypes using Sketch and Invision
Usability Testing
Design Process
Day 1: Understand
I started the design sprint day one by reviewing available research data (user interview highlights, a persona, and a video clip of a user interview) about Post Up users to understand their needs.
Based on the insights from the interviews and the persona, I developed a consolidated persona.
Customer Journey
As a part of the design sprint day one, I drew a couple of maps of potential end-to-end experiences.
DAY 2: Sketching Solutions
I kicked off day two by conducting “Lightning Demos”. I set up a timer for 20 minutes and quickly looked through apps like Google Maps, Yelp, and Classpass to see how their search and filter functions worked, which ended up being a great inspiration for the solutions I came up with.
Crazy 8s Exercise
I chose the main landing page as the most important screen and quickly sketched out 8 ideas.
Solution sketch
After choosing the solution screen from the crazy 8 exercise, I sketched out the key screens to prototype.
DAY 3: Decide & Storyboard
Day 3 of Design Sprint was all about making decisions and sketching out a storyboard that explores how the user would use this app to find a work spot that is perfect for their needs.
DAY 4: Prototyping
Based on the storyboard I created on day 3, I spent day 4 creating a high fidelity prototype of PostUp app that helps remote workers save time on finding the right working spot.
Filter feature
The key feature of this app is the filter function in which the user can set up filters that meet their unique work needs so that they can get fewer but better choices.
Quickly scannable relevant informations
When the user taps on the working spot, it shows work relevant information in different categories, so the users can quickly scan and decide.
DAY 5: Validation
For usability testing, I conducted 5 remote moderated tests. The participants were all either remote freelance workers or students.
By watching them using the app, I got the validation that the app solved the main problems it initially set out to solve. All of them thought the overall user experience was very intuitive and clear, and it took them less than 5 minutes to finish the task of finding the new workplace which was a good indicator that the app accomplished its goal.
The users only had minor feedback and suggestions for version 2.0.
Filter screen:
“Consider the user scenario where the user searching the location remotely for the “distance from me”.
— test user 1Result screen“I’d like to be able to compare different work spots for certain categories.”
— test user 2
Navigation screen“I’d want to see the full route first before it starts the navigation. So rather than navigate within the app, I would prefer the app prompts Google maps so I can explore the area virtually to get the feel for the neighborhood.”
— test user 3
Reflect
This was a great experience and reminder that the best solution isn’t always the most time-consuming solution (hence the 5 day sprint) and sometimes you have to “Proceed and be bold”.
Source: Facebook Analog Lab