PostUp
PostUp
About
Role: UI/UX Designer | Google Ventures Design Sprint
PostUp is an app made for remote workers to easily access information on public workspaces near them. They have implemented a small monthly fee of $5.99 for users to access important information such as locations, distance, key amenities, and more. With PostUp you can save and go back to your favorite work spots, which will involve less time scrolling around looking for an ideal space.
Day 1: Map
The Problem
Remote workers are struggling to quickly find a public space to work in. There are specific essential things or needs that they desire such as available tables, outlets, wifi, space to talk for meetings, and bathrooms. A problem that was mentioned is finding the right spot because they don’t know if it’s crowded or the right environment until they get there so they would like to know about all the details prior to showing up to save their time traveling.
Persona
Previous research had gathered data on the target persona. Personas help you understand your users' needs, experiences, behaviors and goals.
Day 2: Sketch
Crazy 8's
After taking notes on the current data, I practiced a crazy 8's exercise. I created 8 sketches each given a minute, totaling to 8 minutes. It allowed me to quickly generate initial ideas without worrying about details. After creating my sketches, I chose one that I wanted to explore more in my solution sketch.
Solution Sketch
From my crazy 8's exercise, I picked out screens I wanted to explore. I sketched out a previous and after screen based off one of my sketches to illustrate a user flow.
Day 3: Storyboard
On day 3, I started to create a storyboard so it can help me organize my thoughts from the previous sketching exercises. The storyboard will help outline design choices for the problem we are trying to solve. I ended up going not going for complex ideas like 360 view of place or live seat availability. Even better, incorporating seat reservation capability will add to solving the problem of ensuring having a space.
Day 4: Prototype
Day 4 of the design sprint, I started to create the prototype through Figma. I was able to utilize the storyboard I had previously made on day 3 to guide my design choices.
To view the full prototype, please click here.
Day 5: Testing
User Interviews
I conducted 5 user interviews where they all completed the same task of attempting to reserve a seat at a nearby bakery. Below are some comments made from the testing sessions.
“I thought I landed on the main screen”
“I don’t know if I want to have to spend a minimum”
“I want to see the location’s busy hours”
Potential Solutions
A solution to making a seat reservation is to minimize the value of how much a user is required to pay. For example, it could be "Must purchase at least 1 item on the menu" so users have control.
In order to avoid confusion, the landing page could be the map instead of the home page of suggestions. This will be more straightforward so users can immediately search for nearby spaces.
We can add a similar graph of the noise level to create a section for busy hours on the information page. Therefore, users can have access to not only the noise level, but also the busy hours because we don't have data that correlates busy hours with noise levels.
To address the sizing, we can make buttons and icons larger so it's easier to tap on and figure out what each identifies without squinting.
Learnings
This design sprint experience helped me learn how to prioritize specific task and focus on the main idea of each day. I learned how to work more efficiently given each day, I had to focus on what I wanted to accomplish by the end.
It was interesting to see how many ideas I wanted to implement, but given the time restraint I had to prioritize the most important features to solve the problem. This taught me what was tangible in the moment and how to go about slimming larger complex ideas.