URBANSITTER
HOW CAN URBANSITTER IMPROVE BASED ON ITS IDENTIFIED
PAIN POINTS?
UrbanSitter connects parents with sitters & nannies for their children. Sitters make profile for parents to read and possibly reach out to as well as parents create job postings for sitters to express interest to. We'll be focusing on the sitter side of UrbanSitter and focusing in on their painpoints. Identifying and providing solutions to these painpoints help evolve UrbanSitter to a stronger product that helps make for a better experience for both of their consumer types.
TIMELINE: 3 days
TOOLS: Adobe XD and Photoshop
PAIN POINTS
1. Parents can currently review sitters so that future families can get an idea of the sitter, however there isn't a system to reciprocate the gesture for sitters. Unfortunately there are horror stories about unfit families and there is no way to inform future sitters about them. A review system similar to the current parents for sitters would be beneficial for sitters.
2. When sitters filter through job postings, one of the current filters "Distance" displays the physical distance from point A to point B in a straight line. However, no one travels to a place in one straight line. It's miscommunication from UrbanSitter to the sitters as sitters are now seeing jobs that are far beyond what they initially inputted in the filters.
3. Many sitters are also parents and find themselves needing a product like UrbanSitter for their own families. However UrbanSitter recognizes that the user's email has already created a sitter account and can't move forward with making a parent account. Similar to Uber and Lyft, a feature that allows users to switch between a parent and a sitter would streamline the account making process and make it more inviting for users to use both services of UrbanSitter.
Who are we redesigning for? UrbanSitter's sitters & nannies are predominantly women between the ages of 18-60. In turning to a digital product rather than word of mouth for child care work, the typical user is familiar enough with mobile apps to turn to them for work. The typical user would be friendly and light-hearted as it's their personality as when working with children. This is brought into consideration with creating copy for UrbanSitter, to make it approachable and easy to understand.
USE CASE & USER FLOWS FOR PAIN POINTS
FAMILY REVIEWS
Just as parents want to find thoughtful and caring child care, sitters & nannies want to find thoughtful and caring families. It becomes difficult for sitters to come back to UrbanSitter after they've had an uneventful experience with a family. An experience that another sitter may have had, and could have shared with other sitters. By better preparing sitters & nannies with reviews on families, they can make a better informed decision on whether to work with a family. Currently users make a quick judgement based on whether an account has been flushed out with basic information such as a profile picture and a city/neighborhood location. It doesn't leave much more for making a sound decision.
PARENT/SITTER MODE
With many sitters & nannies having their own families, they'd like to utilize both sides of UrbanSitter. Making them create two accounts, for each a sitter and a parent create another hoop for them to jump through. UrbanSitter has already collected their information once, to create another account with the same information is redundant. Creating a profile switch allows for users to easily move from one side to another. It makes UrbanSitter move inviting to further use the product. The profile switch shortens the user flow, making it easier and welcoming to become both a sitter and a parent user.
LOCATION
An effective job search allows for users to return back to UrbanSitter to look for more work. This miscommunication makes users jump through more hoops than necessary. Making users scan through the job postings becomes a nuisance for sitters. No one travels in a direct line from point A to point B so that information become useless. It serves no value to the user. By altering the copy to better convey the type of filter, it makes it clearer the purpose of the filter. Expectations are set clear and help users better anticipate what the filtered job postings would be.
USER INTERFACE
This project focused primarily on the user experience and how the user flow and wireframes can address the solutions to these painpoints, the user interface was adjusted to better fit the personality of UrbanSitter.
A sans serif (Museo Sans) keeps UrbanSitter sleek and modern for the users. With a variety of age of users, a simple and clean font family was chosen. It helps to convey a friendly interface, a personality associated with working with children. It makes the app more approachable. In redesigning UrbanSitter, the original colors were kept to keep intact the brand identity as it has a vivid purple and green, a pair that can easily be recognizable and associated with UrbanSitter.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
I'd love to see UrbanSitter bring these changes to life. Other developments I can envision to better UrbanSitter include looking into ways to better protect sitters & nannies. While UrbanSitter is created by parents, UrbanSitter can place themselves in a better strategic position by evolving their product to support sitters. UrbanSitter can't run without sitters & nannies so it's important to create a product that can support both types of users. Other pain points I've heard from sitters & nannies include how parents fail to pay sitters so diving into research to better provide support to sitters for their payments can also create a more positive experience as sitters can establish trust knowing that the family will complete their payment.
