This project aimed to determine and design an effective, engaging platform for users to find and hire home service professionals on-demand. The goal of the digital experience was to make finding the “right” contractors for the job, including budgetary and home project considerations, easy and intuitive for the customer. Further, the team was tasked with creating and implementing a UX strategy that met both our users’ needs and client’s business goals.
The challenge:
The current research goal for this project was exploratory in nature, specifically getting a better understanding of what the target audience found meaningful and useful within the home services marketplace. Determining how users go about finding and hiring contractors. We also needed to find out the level of home repair experience and knowledge our users had when it came down to working with contractors.
Project Goals
- Gain an understanding of what the main pain points and frustrations are when users are going through the process of finding a home renovation contractor.
- Improve the user experience and provide convenience to the user by providing transparent information and bringing a sense of trust through the design.
- Identify what features to incorporate to make RENOVA a useful product for all users, whether they are experienced or working on their very first home project.
How will we make RENOVA stand out in the home services market?
Market research revealed that home services is a crowded marketplace, however, there are noticeable entry points for RENOVA to shine. Specifically, there is a lack of information on the contractors themselves, be it their qualifications, past projects, or other details that could help the user make a better informed decision. This ties into transparency. Whether it was finding information on the pricing structure, contractor ability, policies, or brand principles. Another opportunity that arose was a way to enhance personalization for the user. This can take on different meanings, but creating a design that gives the user a sense of familiarity with the process and the professional can increase brand trust.
Giving RENOVA the ability to feel personal and trusted aligns with the user research we conducted, where 40.5% of survey respondents reported trusting word-of-mouth recommendations for home service needs.
User Persona
Pain Points/ Frustrations:
- Experience
- Communication/Contact
- Project Management
- Information/Industry Knowledge
Possible Features to Explore:
- Reviews- All of our participants in user interviews stated that they would like a reviews section to find reliable contractors.
- Itemized Breakdowns- Cost, time and materials.
- Scheduling- People need a way to schedule a contractor, have a discussion about the timeline of the project and know when the contractors are going to be working on the project
- Previous work- Before and after photos of contractors projects
- Directory- of professionals, information on how long they have been in business and if they are insured.
- Information- access information on payment methods and bidding
- Communication- Users can message, chat, email and have the ability to call contractors directly.
Price Estimator
As the user interacts with the price estimate slider, they are able to see the price amount responding on the right and the top contractor results changing based on the user’s desired price.
This convenient feature enables the user to then save their estimate on the particular project as well as post it to a job board so that contractors are able to bid on that customer’s project.
Contractor Profile
We added a contact feature where the user is able to send a detailed message about their home renovation project straight to the contractor. We revamped the reviews section to be more in-depth where users are able to see a contractors full history of reviews and past projects- with upfront pricing information as well as viewing pictures and videos of their projects. We also built out a page to show the full expanse of projects that a contractor has completed so that users have full transparency when trying to find the right hire.
Contractor Directory
The most prominent issue was that participants had a difficult time locating the contractor directory under the resources tab. We answered our user’s needs by making a directory tab in the top navigation We also updated the formatting of the contractor profile cards to have a cleaner, more balanced aesthetic as well as fixing spacing issues on the side bar
