MOBILE APP

PostUp

Discover the freedom to quickly find cool & cozy coffee shops where you can get your work done.

UX Designer & Researcher

Role

A Week

Timeline

Sketch, Figma, InVision

Tools

GV Design Sprint

Methodology

What’s Design Sprint?

Overview

HOW IT ALL STARTED

Ever since I started freelancing, I’ve been having a problem finding a good place to work from: with good coffee, reliable wi-fi, beautiful interior, and amenities at hand. Easy to imagine, not easy to find. How may times I thought I found “the one”, when I’d bring my heavy bag with a laptop, order a coffee, sit at a table to only realize…there’s no single outlet. Sounds familiar?

That’s why when a client hired me to design “PostUp”, it resonated with me right away. I’ve been fighting those battles, I know what it feels like. It sounded like a dream come true: helping freelancers and remote workers find great places where they can get their work done. 

Challenge

THE PROBLEM SPACE

How might we make it easier & more efficient for freelancers to find great places to work from? How can we provide a “directory”of places that already exist? With “PostUp” people should always be able to find great places to work and get work done. 

Design Constraints

Mobile App

Customers are constantly on the go and need a quick access without being tied to WI-FI, their desk or PC.

Real Places

The product should provide a directory of real places that already exist and can be displayed on the map.

Subscription

A $5 per month subscription fee is required for customers to have unlimited access to the product.

DAY 1

GOALS

• Understand the problem and the user’s pain points
• Pick an important area to focus on
• Start at the end by mapping a possible end-to-end user scenario

Diving Into Users’ Pain Points

To verify the hypothesis that freelancers have trouble finding places where they can get their work done, i kicked off the research phase. I created a survey to reach my target audience for the research study. I have recruited 8 participants and asked each one of them to walk me through their process of finding a place to work from using their mobile phones.

Through the interviews, I learned that here are lots of criteria that users take into account when looking for a place to work from. Comparing a number of coffee shops according to the criteria highlighted by the participants, is an extremely time-consuming process, which involves a lot of jumping back and forth. The list of criteria participants take into account in their search process:

The place should be quiet and not busy/overcrowded.

The place should have restrooms available.

It should be within a short walking distance.

It should have amenities, especially outlets.

It should be spacious, with tables and chairs.

It should offer bonus points for food & drinks.

Persona

Key Research Insights 💡

Distance Matters

As the first thing people do after typing “coffee shops near me” is clicking on the map – distance is the most crucial criterion to take into account before they move onto checking other information.

Sifting Through

It’s not easy to find a place that has wi-fi, bathrooms, restrooms, outlets, – all in one place. As a result,  people have to sift through lots of reviews to find that information.

Useless Reviews

It’s hard and extremely time-consuming for people to find any information about amenities, as the reviews are mostly about food or service.

Working Hours 

People check the working hours not because it’s really important: they actually check busy times, if there is a crowd or a lunch rush at the moment.

Interior Photos  

What people find helpful – photos of the interior as they help see if there are tables, if the space is big/small, while photos of food aren’t helpful, but rather distracting. Users have to look through lots of photos of food to distill the info about the space and if it can accommodate their needs.

How Do I Get There

When people are looking for a place to work using google – most of the time they are not familiar with the part of the city where they are currently in, so even if the place is close, walking is not the best option.

How Might We?

Below are the questions I need to answer as a designer in order to be able to turn customer’s challenges and paint points into opportunities for design.

HMW

give customers an opportunity to find great places to work without having to jump back and forth between a map, reviews, amenities?

HMW

make the process of looking for the best spot to work less time consuming and more effective so that they don’t feel frustrated?

HMW

assist users in finding a place to work that suits their goals best, whether it’s making calls, having meetings, working only, all of the above?

HMW

help customers better visualize the distance of the places from their current location?

HMW

help customers get to places in an unknown part of the city or an unknown city?

HMW

streamline & optimize the search process to make it less time-consuming?

User Map

DAY 2

GOALS


• Competitor analysis
• Identifying the critical screen
• Sketch out competing solutions 

Lightning Demos

I went through several existing apps to find inspiration and get an idea of what competitors have to offer in this domain.

Click on the image to zoom in 🔎

Crazy 8s

Once I’ve analyzed and narrowed down my ideas, I spent one minute on each of 8 small rough sketches  shown below to come up with different screen  variations.

Solution Sketch

As a next step, I picked one screen from Crazy 8s exercise and sketched out a solution, a three-panel board that shows the succession of steps that need to be undertaken by  users

I also added a splash screen to utilize unused white space. 😁

DAY 3

GOALS

• Make decisions
• Turn ideas into a testable hypothesis
• Storyboarding

The Story In Sketches…

…Transformed Into Reality ✨

Key Design Decisions

Acquisition

The sign up screen contains the acquisition part that has been designed to increase conversion rate. The sign up  screen describes the product, and what it offers to persuade customers to sign up for it for a $5 subscription fee and justify its cost.

Map vs List

Based on research, the 1st thing users do after they’ve googled “coffee shops near me” is clicking the map to see the distance from their location. Thus, Homepage is displayed as a full screen map rather than a list of places, or “bubbles” with pictures.

Filter

A pop-up filter has been designed as a first step in the experience, before users get to see homepage with the map view. This way they won’t have to click through places on the map before filters have been applied. It will save the time and make search strategy more efficient.

Uber Integration

As some people mentioned that most of the time they don’t know the part of the city very well when looking for a place, I decided to make it easier for them to get there once they’ve made a choice: not only Google Maps and Apple Maps, but also an integration with Uber app.

Google View 360

Showcasing the inside of the coffee shops 24/7 with a Google 360 Virtual Tour to give users an idea what the interior looks like, whether there are tables and chairs and how many in order to be able to host a work meeting. Based on research, users wanted to know what the place looks like inside.

Pills & Their Placement

Pills have been designed as part of the filter so users can communicate their needs & indicate what they are looking a place for: meeting, calls, or  just getting work done to streamline the filtering process. Initially pills were places above, but didn’t test well.

DAY 4

GOALS

• Creating a realistic prototype

Prototype Scenario

I put together a Figma prototype and asked the participants to complete the following task:

“To begin, we will assume that you have already have an account. You need to log into “PostUp”. You are to find a coffee shop in Grant Park where you can work and make calls and which has a good Wi-Fi. Since downtown Chicago isn’t very familiar and the place is more than a mile away – you will need to request Uber to get there”.

Kseniya Iyeropes

DAY 5 

GOALS

• Validate assumptions
• Get feedback from real users​​​​​​​ 

Success Rate 100%

All participants successfully completed the task.

Intuitive Design

All participants stated that it’s easy to use even for first-time users.

High Conversion

Most participants said they’d use this app for $5/month.

Improvement Areas

Despite the fact that the product overall tested very well, there were some areas that needed improvement. 

Pills Overlooked

Solution:

The pills in the filter “work”, “call”, “meet” went overlooked by some users. They started switching the filter toggles right away. Recommendation here is would be to move the pills down to the white background, so that they are in close proximity to the filter toggles, making it a unified experience, not fragmented.

Icon Misinterpreted

Solution:

The “right arrow” in the summary card has been taken as affordance to expand the card, while it was an entry point to getting directions. Recommendation is to remove this icon button, because it already exists in the expanded view + users don’t make a decision until the read all the details.

WHAT I LEARNED

Key Takeaways

What I loved about the Google Ventures design sprint, is that it’s a problem-solving methodology that helps prove or disprove a hypothesis within less than a week. This result-oriented process forced me to make decisions fast and move on, while usually it takes me considerable time due to my urge to analyze, reflect on decisions & introspect. I did feel pressure because of the aggressive timeline. What helped me find peace, though, was the understanding that it’s okay if the solution wasn’t going to work. As you only have invested 5 days, as opposed to months or even years.

Fast-forward into the future, I can tell that running sprints is one of the most valuable skills I’ve learned. I’ve participated in dozens of sprints since then, and even facilitated a few. It helped me and my teams build innovative products that are now live & create lasting impact. ✨🚀