One of the biggest problems remote workers face is the amount of time spent searching for a place to work. Most of the services are for those looking for a place to eat and drink, not for those looking for a place to work. A great deal of time is consumed by reading reviews or looking through pictures to determine if the location has what they are looking for.
Remote workers need wifi, outlets, quiet stations, and other amenities to help them get their work done.
Avoiding busy periods means more availability, a quieter environment, and a place to meet clients or colleagues.
They need places nearby, especially if they are new to the area.
Seeing the overwhelming amount of information a person has to go through to find what they are looking for, inspired me to help improve how they receive all of that information. The idea is to save them time by creating more curated search results.
This project is a modified GV (Google Ventures) design sprint challenge. Several changes have been made to accommodate solo work. Like a typical design sprint, this is conducted over five days, each with its own theme and set of tasks. I decided to work on PostUp, a start-up that wants to help remote workers find great coffee shops and public places to work from.
The company has received lots of feedback and discussions on what remote workers are looking for. Their aim is to simplify the discovery of great work environments using their platform.
- Understand the Problem
- Maps
- Lightning Demo
- Crazy 8s
- Solution Sketch
- Short description
- Storyboard
- Prototype Solution
- Validate
- Interviews
The first step of my design process is to understand what the users' needs and frustrations are. I synthesized the data from the research and interviews provided by PostUp into a map to help form insights and brainstorm design ideas to solve the problem. One of the biggest issues that stood out to me was the amount of time spent searching for a workspace that met their needs.
This is an example of the experience a user might have when using the application.
During the lighting demo, I was looking at solutions competitors had produced to solve a similar problem to mine. I focused on different areas of the engagement and used Maps, Restaurants, Hotels, and Movies apps screens for inspiration.
Referring back to the Filters from Day 1, it became clear that the Filter screen was the most critical feature to users. A screen of this complexity is a vital part of the system. I designed several potential solutions to this screen, by using the Crazy 8's method.
The Crazy 8's is a high-speed sketching exercise that challenges people to sketch eight different ideas in eight minutes. The objective is to go beyond your first idea, which is seldom the most innovative, and to generate several different solutions for your problem.
Once I completed the Crazy 8s, I refined and combined the designs into a solution sketch. The solution sketch is a three-panel board that includes elements of the user interface design to illustrate how the screens would work in real life.
Top Left to Right
Bottom Left to Right
I conducted remote user testing via zoom and used its screen sharing feature to see how the participant navigated the prototype. I wanted to see if I could spot any patterns or issues they might have. All five of the interviewees were remote workers, who have the flexibility to work from anywhere.
Each interview lasted roughly 30 minutes; the first 10 minutes were spent getting them situated; the last 20 minutes were spent examining how they used the app.
Here are 3 of the main issues that I found when testing the design, along with solutions for improvement.
In the filtering section, many participants struggled with the "seats available" feature. They expressed that they would rather see "busy hours" than "seats available." There was concern about constantly having to check the status of seat availability.
A solution is to replace the "seats available" feature with "busy hours". This will allow them to estimate what time they can work there.
Participants wanted to know how long it would take them to arrive at their destination on foot.
It would be a good idea to include both distance and walking time.
One participant believed that the blue pins on the map indicated places for WiFi.
To avoid confusion, I would change the pins' color to a standard red.
