Renova
UX - Website
How might we help renters and homeowners connect with the right home service professionals?
Problem
Homeowners and renters with minimal to no experience in the home improvement industry find it difficult to connect with reliable and affordable contractors.
Solution
Renova is a web-based platform that connects renters and homeowners with local home service professionals. The website makes finding the “right” people for the job easy and intuitive for the customer.
Project Overview
Timeframe: 4 weeks
Team: Marco Vertucci, Marisa Katagiri, Shannon Finn, Jaden Johnson
Role: UX Designer, Product designer
Deliverables: Research Report, Information Architecture, Annotated wireframes and clickable prototypes
Tools: Sketch, Figma, Invision
RESEARCH
Understanding the challenge
The team has been tasked with designing a platform for users to find and hire home services professionals on-demand. The goal for Renova is to empower busy, price-conscious homeowners and renters with all the information necessary to connect with the contractor that best fits their needs.
Understanding the market
There is a large wave of millennials who are now finally buying homes, often older homes that need more repairs. Coupled with the fact that millennials tend to take on more projects and spend more per renovation, this data would suggest that millennials are going to be a huge factor in driving the future of the home improvement industry.
Home improvement sales expected to increase to $465 billion dollars by 2022
Consumer spending on home improvement has risen 17% in the past year
80% of the nation’s 137 million homes are now at least 20 years old
87% of renovation projects resulted in hiring a professional
Competitive Analysis
Even though bigger, more established companies take up a crowded marketplace, there are noticeable opportunities for Renova to shine.
Show cost upfront: users want transparency about pricing structure and be able to compare options before they commit
In depth contractor profiles: users want more information on the contractors. Qualifications, past projects, reviews and other details can help them make a more informed decision
Bidding options: users want to choose the payment option that best suits the project, and get frustrated having to reach out to multiple contractors
Understanding the users
After getting a sense of the home services space, the team then went on to get insights into the users themselves. We conducted both user interviews for qualitative, deeper understanding of the user, and also a survey to see broader trends within the demographic and found there were strong patterns across both testing methods.
90% mention reviews influence their decision making process
80% mention price as most important when looking for contractors
55% mention quality of service as their primary frustration
7/10 users cited websites over apps as their preferred platform for hiring a contractor.
8/10 users found reviews influenced their decision to hire in the past
8/10 users want to have an idea of pricing before hiring someone so they can shop around for prices.
9/10 users reported frustration at the information available to them during the contractor searching process.
SYNTHESIS
Persona
In order to synthesize our research findings and maximize product empathy we created Sadie, a persona meant to humanize and anchor our design direction.
She and her partner recently bought a fixer-upper. They saved a little money by buying an older home and planned to use a little of the leftover money to hire a pro for a few upgrades.
Journey Map
Unfortunately, Sadie has had a bad experience hiring a contractor before. We created a journey map of her experience to better understand what went wrong and what opportunities we can take from her negative experience to inform our product.
Design Principles
Transparency
Users can expect to have upfront information on all our contractors so that they don’t have to do outside research.
Trust
Users should not have to do their own legwork. The platform will handle finding the perfect contractor for any type of home project.
Convenience
Users can trust the information presented to them is accurate and at the best value for their time and money.
Problem Statement
The price-conscious homeowner needs a simple, direct way to find relevant contractors because the right hire can minimize costs and frustrations.
IDEATION
Mindmapping
After understanding who our user is, we thought about all the possible ideas that could not only meet Sadie’s needs, but also enhance her customer journey through the platform. We started with our problem statement and identified the 3 most significant pain points and what users value the most and started organically attaching ideas to the different topics. The different triggers allowed us to view the address the problem from a different angle and perspectives.
Paper Wireframes
This prompted divergent thinking, coming up with various ideas that could eventually lead to features Renova could offer to Sadie and users like her. These ideas centered on Sadie’s motivations and frustrations, and how Renova could quickly and easily get her to her goals. A few of our ideas were
A visual budget tracker to keep users within budget through itemized breakdowns
A glossary to find the information they need in order to talk confidently to contractors when taking on a new home renovation project
A contractor profile to display information that can inform the user on whether the contractor is the right match for their job
Easy DIY projects to get users more comfortable with the construction process
DESIGN
Wireframes
Getting the ideas on paper gave more shape to the design direction, and was a good starting point. From there, we narrowed our scope to what was most important by asking ourselves “What is most important to Sadie?”
Determine price before hiring
We decided to go with a price estimator tool that the user could leverage to get a price range before having to talk to a contractor or commit to paying anything upfront. Estimates are common across the industry, but what sets this feature apart for Renova is the option for the user to post that estimate on an internal job board. This saves Sadie from having to call multiple contractors, and shifts that responsibility to the contractors which can then get in contact with her directly.
Determine contractor fit before hiring
Sadie can use the contractor profile to read reviews, see previous work, vet their credentials, message them for a quote, and so on. The profile not only makes the process more personal but also increases the likelihood of satisfaction with the professional hired. Knowledge about the contractor promotes transparency and can increase confidence in the process, and overall in Renova.
Usability Testing
We were able to put these assumptions to the test by interviewing 6 people and asking them to complete two different tasks on our interactive prototype. Usability testing at this stage revealed a few key details about our design.
While the participants responded well to the price estimator, they reported that they needed more information on how to use the feature overall.
Users did not have enough context around how to use the estimate slider
Participants had a difficult time locating the contractor directory under the resources tab in the top navigation.
Converged Design
Using the results from our usability testing, I iterated on the price estimator and contractor flows, keeping the pain points users experienced and the user behaviors from the personas at the forefront.
EVALUATE
Next Steps
Since this is a two way marketplace (think Airbnb) there is a lot of opportunity to build the entire contractor facing portion of the site.
By transition our website to be responsive, we would be able to reach the people who mentioned using mobile apps to find contractors. And by introducing a referral option to recommend contractors, we could capitalize on the users who prefer going through personal recommendations.
Reflections
Throughout this project, I learned how valuable research is in order to create something with real world applications. Not being familiar with the domain we were designing for, I relied heavily on surveys, interviews, and secondary research to be able to empathize with our target user.
Working in a team of four designers we certainly did not have a shortage of ideas, and there were a few times where we didn’t see eye to eye on what features to prioritize. However, we learned how to lean on each other's strengths to work collaboratively, and by going back to our problem statement and persona, and taking in consideration our timeframe and resources, we were able to scope down and identify the core features to reach our MVP.