Major version iteration of an apartment renovation service app
Overview
The app provides customers with a range of online services, from contacting the service provider to choosing an interior design solution, purchasing materials and furniture, and monitoring the construction process.
This was a team project. As the team leader who understands the product very well from not only the design aspect but also the business aspect, I try to provide more insights into both aspects to my team members, as well as use some methodologies to help them open their minds and generate ideas.
Role
Product designer
Team facilitator
Skills
Team management, Communication, User study, Information architecture, Interaction, Prototyping design
The company that I worked for provided both human-assisted and system-driven service options for interior design and construction to customers. Me and my team were responsible for the mobile application design in order to convert customers from human-assisted to system self-service for less human-resources consuming and more data archiving.
Project background
The main pain points were mostly concentrated on finalizing the interior design:
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Customers could not easily find what they wanted on the homepage of the app;
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There were too many steps and terms in some links such as submitting their demands;
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The information in the tripartite communication among the customer, the service staff, and the interior designer often could not be synced, leading to low efficiency in finalizing the design.
Because of the lengthy process of the service and the limited research resources, it was not easy to conduct straightforward user research for the design team. We developed an alternative path.
The service staff that worked one-on-one with each customer were the closest people to the customers as well as the best objectives to interview for getting customers' feedback in our situation. Thus, we developed the customer journey map with them together and conducted two focus group discussions with them to determine the pain points that they observed.
Problem identified
Goals
With this iteration of the major version, the goal of the design team was to match the business goals with the customer goals, which specifically meant eliminating the confusion from customers, helping them access information and complete tasks simply and efficiently while collecting sufficient information that the business needed, as well as consuming less human assistance.
Product design
Frame structure optimization
The homepage frame structure was fragmented before optimization, with the horizontal timeline interaction that confused customers as well as prevented them from quickly locating the current task. The optimization should include:
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Reduce the steps to finish the task (5 steps to 4 steps)
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Increase the content focus to decrease user distractions
The layout and content of the homepage had to be redefined as well.
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Stick the primary task area to the top;
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Design several generic layouts;
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Summarize the information that needs to be displayed and apply a generic layout on each piece.
We also analyzed the flows of some key features. For instance, before the optimization, submitting needs and submitting modification were two independent flows yet with dependent steps in each flow. When submitting needs, users had to complete the whole flow with no break to finish the task. The points that we decide to improve included:
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Combine the flows of submitting needs and submitting modifications, attributing to the tailored plans
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Shorten the necessary steps
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Provide users with the freedom to check and adjust repeatedly
The system included the styles of colors and fonts as well as commonly used components such as buttons, navigations and cards.
Design system
The portion of customers that submitted needs through the app increased from 8.6% to 13.8%;
The portion of customers that self-selected plans in the app increased from 11.6% to 13.4%;
The portion of customers that signed the contract through the app increased from 6.9% to 8.8%.
Basically, customers are more receptive to operating in the newly released version.
Key metrics after release
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