Background: My partner and I were given the assignment of working with Renovate Simply, a start-up that makes it easy for homeowners to find the best contractor for a home renovation project. A user goes through an estimation flow process to review the situation and find the best person for the job.
My Roles: user research, visual design, wireframes, competitive/comparative analysis, personas
Team: Matt Toman & Robert Boler for General Assembly
With a name like Renovate Simply, it was important to capitalize on that by making it as simple and easily understandable as possible.
Upon our first meeting with the client, they discussed with us how they already had a website built, but expressed that there were apparent issues. It was our job to spend the majority of our time with users going through the estimation flow and gathering data on the positives, the negatives, and what could help make it better.
Competitive/Comparative Analysis
My first task for this project was to prepare the competitive analysis. I spent time going through sites that had similar flows. This made it easy to size up the design trends and features. One particular competitor was Kukun. It was noted by our clients that they had a business model that was most similar to theirs.
Kukun provides a home renovation marketplace for homeowners and industry professionals to come together.
Given that Kukun is our client’s main competitor, I spent extra time interacting with their platform. The biggest insight I uncovered was that Kukun doesn’t explicitly vet their contractors. This is important because it distinctly sets Renovate Simply apart from the competition. Our clients weren't necessarily conscious of this detail, therefore, it became enlightening information.
Personas
I took the time to draft up specifics on our personas. It was a given that homeowners were our primary persona, so my partner and I spent most of our time interviewing and testing with those users. Contractors and realtors were our secondary personas.
Interviews & Insights
After researching more about the home renovation process itself, it was important to take time to interview homeowners. This was the most crucial process to gaining insight in this project. It determined our primary persona was homeowners who’ve reached out to a contractor to start a renovation project, so we began our interviews there. My partner and I drafted a list of questions to ask and also took them through the current Renovate Simply mobile website.
"It's a hassle, but nothing beats being able to meet a contractor face-to-face"
"I don't know what I don't know, y'know?"
After interviews with 6 homeowners (plus two realtors and one contractor), we were able to compile a list of insights related to the most important things homeowners wanted.
Once we received enough feedback from our homeowners, we used the insights to create an experience map:
Design
Using the insights and experience map as a guide, my partner and I separately began design studio sketches. This process helped us individually bring out what was in our heads for an app:
This process helped us to move forward with a paper prototype, which led to two different variations. We tested in-person and remotely using the InVision app.
So, after the two early paper prototypes, we were able to inform the results of those into a cleaner, more polished version. After that point, we began to create wireframes, a process that I spent much of my time on.
