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Repairly 

Creating a home services site for millennials 

My Role

I carried out a variety of tasks on our team, including:

  • wireframing

  • prototyping

  • user research 

  • data synthesis 

  • project management 

Our Problem 

Tech savvy millennial homeowners and renters, and who don’t have the best DIY skills,  need a way to find reliable and affordable home services 

Our Opportunity

Our team set out to create a site that allows our target millennial audience to find, communicate with, and hire home professionals with ease and confidence. 

My Role:

our exploratory research told us:

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This tells us that:

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  • Our target audience has a need for help with many of their home improvement projects.

  • Their digital preferences can be an asset by which we can help them help themselves in this area of their lives

Asking the user - our survey results

Top 3 features users would like when using a home services website or app:

  • Verified reviews

  • Price comparisons

  • Quotes and/or bidsfrom home services professionals

Top 3 frustrations that users indicated when looking for a pro to hire:

  • No reviews

  • Can’t get straightforward quotes and estimates

  • Vendors are unresponsive

In addition to the survey, we interviewed users

Key Takeaways:

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  • Many users haven’t used libraries for career help

  • Users would like mentorship, or personal help in terms of career building or searching. 

  • most survey respondents said they think didn’t think technology was were displacing their opportunities, but

  • Most thought advancing computer skills would be of benefit

  • Users would like hands-on learning and one-on--one instruction

Painting a picture: empathizing with the user’s journey

Kerry: RN, Mother, Homeowner

"A modern home is a happy home!

Age: 31

Gender: Female

Location: Charlotte, NC

Occupation: Registered Nurse

Education: BS

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Goals

  • Renovating her outdated townhouse

  • To modernize an old home

  • To create a space that she and her husband can continue to enjoy​

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Frustrations 

  • Not being able to find someone within her locality

  • Not being able to get in contact with contractors/companies

  • Not being able to find a contractor who is familiar with the modern style that she prefers​

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User Persona

User stories can also help us take a look at what Kerry might be needing:

Narrowing down key user needs

From our research, we discovered that our user needs can be summarized thusly:

Our 3 Key User Needs​

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Info & Communication

Quality

Budget

Ideating solutions: early concepts

Below are early, paper wireframes and their juxtaposed later low-fidelity wireframes

Homepage: paper and low-fidelity iterations

Homepage Compare.png

Home professional’s business page: paper and low-fidelity

Pro page compare.png

Building trust and credibility: Community interaction

The early concepts included a Community page for educational and trust-building purposes.

The community page seemed to stray from the focus of the project, so Linkedin-like endorsements and auser Q&A feature were added

Community Compare.png

Q&A About Home Professionals

Users can answer questions about home pros that they’ve hired in

the past

Questions compare.png

Refining our concepts: Final Wireframes & Prototype

At this point, we started to build out our mid-fidelity wireframes that would ultimately be made into a testable prototype, which would give us what all UX designers are looking for: user feedback

“Prototypes are ultimately vehicles for feedback.”      

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 -Ben Hilson (moonshotio.com)

Building community and trust: home pro Q&A

Hiring a well-vetted home professional can help the user feel confident in their choices. Our final prototype has convenient ways for users to share reviews and endorsements on home professionals

Building community and trust: user endorsements

We eliminated the disruptive pop-up that was present in the earlier iteration to encourage user engagement.

Guided booking to help the user find a home professional

Guided booking to help the user find a home professional (contd.)

Users are given an easy way to contact home professionals and get their

project rolling 

Home professional page: 

Giving users access to reviews, endorsements, and past images of past work 

How did we provide value to our target users?

Looking back at our key user needs, let’s see whether we addressed them:

 

  • Communication and accessibility: We made it easy to find and message home professionals via guided search and prominent buttons to allow users to communicate with vendors. 

  • Reviews, photos, and ratings: We addressed this on multiple levels: reviews, endorsements, and galleries of the home professional’s past work

  • Quality of work: Our system of reviews, endorsements and galleries of past work can help our users feel confident in the quality of work and that they are hiring a capable professional. 

  • Price quotes & comparisons: We made it easy for users to ask home professionals for more info on their work and prices.

Set yourself apart. 

This project was a great lesson in knowing your market in an environment with a very large pool of competition and figuring out how to cater to a specific audience within that large market. Research and brainstorm until you find a way to present value to the user in a way they didn’t previously have access to. 

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