Nov 2021 – Jun 2022
Overview — 001
As a key member of a cross-functional team, I led the design of several end-to-end flows as part of the overhaul for HelloTech's technician app. We aimed to elevate the app from a simple transactional tool to a robust platform promoting customer relationships and repeat bookings. This redesign enhanced the entire user experience, introducing new features that add value for both technicians and the business.
Functions
Product Design
UX Research
Interaction Design
Design System
Design Team
Kareem Soliman (me) – Product Designer
Addison Smyth – Director, Product Design
Patrick Martin – Senior Visual Designer
Status
Shipped
My Role
Design Lead (Offers)
Timeline
Nov 2021 – Mar 2022
Platform
Mobile, Native App
We overhauled the job offer flow to provide technicians with critical information more rapidly. These changes allow them to accept job offers within their priority offer window more efficiently, improving order fulfillment rate.
Through a combination of UX changes and backend updates, we overhauled the job management flow. We allowed for orders to be split at the service level, enabling partial job completion and reducing the need for support tickets to settle technician payouts.
To promote repeat business, we integrated a feature into the app that enables technicians to start new orders and secure immediate assignment upon successful bookings. This function, migrated from an external web app, also offers technicians the opportunity to earn commissions from the sale of products and memberships, advancing our goal of increasing LTV.
Context — 002
HelloTech is a gig-economy platform that connects expert technicians with customers seeking smart-home services.
HelloTech's technician app is the core tool that underpins the day-to-day operations of technicians working on the platform. Through the app, technicians receive job offers, complete work orders, track payments, and manage their account. Despite its essential role to both technicians and the D2C business, the app remained largely unchanged since it’s launch in 2016, maintaining its limited feature set and design.
Problem — 003
Kicking off the app's redesign, user surveys and interviews quickly highlighted 3 key challenges technicians faced. While I had a hand in solving each, my primary focus was owning the end-to-end redesign of job offer flows, which not only initiate the field service experience but also serve as the technician's first touchpoint with the customer. Perfecting this was vital to improving the overall field service experience.
Cumbersome job offers
Accepting a job offer was not as quick and intuitive of a process as technicians had hoped, and work orders were not informative enough.
Limited on-site job management
The current on-site job experience lacked the granularity needed to allow support teams to gain adequate visibility into a job's progress.
Missed business opportunities
The app primarily functioned as a transactional tool and didn't enable or encourage technicians to book repeat business with customers.
Research — 004
In our quest to improve the job offer flow, we surveyed technicians to understand their priorities and daily routines. We recognized that an effective process needed to be quick, intuitive, and also provide technicians with the information necessary to make informed decisions when accepting jobs.
Understanding our users and their needs was fundamental to our approach. Here's a brief breakdown:
Technicians rely on the app to receive job offers, manage their workflow, and interact with customers in their day-to-day field operations.
Customers indirectly benefit by requesting services and interact with technicians using the app to complete jobs in their home.
The key insights we uncovered influenced our design methodology and informed our implementation of the product strategy moving forward.
Appointment selection lacked clarity
Technicians found it tricky to spot conflicts between appointment times and buffer periods. Essentially, the system lacked clear indicators separating actual job timings from buffer periods.
Need for a native job board
Technicians kept requesting an app-native job board for convenience as opposed to the makeshift web dashboard they used. This reflected the need for a more integrated, user-friendly experience within the app itself.
Poor offer details readability
Technicians expressed the challenge of deciphering job locations solely based on ZIP code, making it hard to gauge the job's proximity. Additionally, the short duration of the priority window amplified the need for efficiently scanning vital job details.
No visibility into pending offers
The existing setup lacked a specific area for reviewing pending offers, and stacked on top of existing offers adding visual clutter. Moreover, there were no straightforward options for executing any necessary follow-up actions.
Opportunity — 005
Many technicians expressed their frustration with the 5-minute priority window set for offers, which they felt was far too short. Although we couldn't change this due to business constraints, we felt that remedying the pain points laid out by technicians could significantly speed up and streamline the process.
Strategy — 006
After identifying the key problems, we translated these challenges into actionable goals. This allowed us to focus on what we needed to achieve from both a user and a business perspective.
Improve the user experience by reworking core flows.
Provide easier access to job offers and work order information.
Improve overall app performance, making it responsive and reliable.
Encourage repeat bookings by fostering customer relationships.
Boost fulfillment by streamlining job offers and introducing a job board.
Minimize unserviceable job rate by overhauling onsite job management.
Process — 007
Kicking off the design process, I began by dissecting the existing job offer flow. Each step was scrutinized and iteratively refined, guided by an ongoing feedback loop with technicians through additional more in-depth surveys and several rounds of usability testing. Here are some of the top-level highlights of that process.
Guided by technician feedback, I reworked the job offer cards to make vital details more prominent. The page's visual hierarchy was reshaped based on the results of technician surveys, where they ranked the importance of various job details. Now, the job offer cards showcase key information more prominently — service SKUs with quantities, the earliest available appointment time, and the total number of times suggested by customers.
Addressing another key point of feedback, active priority offers now have a visually distinctive color-change, coupled with a persistent countdown timer visible throughout the entire job offer process.
In the redesign, we introduced a Job Board tab, migrating offers from the original web dashboard for enhanced accessibility. With visibility in mind, we revamped the job offer list, emphasizing priority and soon-to-expire offers.
I revamped the job offer details page to include an interactive map showcasing the job radius. This feature, introduced based on technicians' feedback, allows them to determine the approximate location of the job at a glance, all while safeguarding customers' information.
Further changes to the page layout made the job offer details cleaner and easier to read. I grouped work order details by service type and made customer responses stand out for quick scanning. The View Available Times button was turned into a more accessible floating action button that's easier to spot and use. I also added a countdown timer for priority offers that stays visible on the screen, so technicians can keep track of their priority window no matter where you are on the page.
The appointment selection received an overhaul to not only show times blocked out by existing appointments but also details about those appointments, aiding technicians in deciding whether to accept the offer at hand. We also introduced a multi-select variant for certain job offers that require technicians to pick multiple time slots.
Other enhancements include a revamped date selector positioned at the top of the page, showcasing skipped days for clarity, and a more streamlined time display that solely presents available slots, thereby simplifying the selection process.
Embracing the redesign, we crafted a feature that empowered technicians to initiate reschedule requests within the app, effectively eliminating the need for tricky off-platform arrangements. To increase accessibility and context, we seamlessly integrated information about job offers and upcoming tasks directly onto the home page.
Additionally, the newly introduced view for pending offers offered a sleek layout, neatly categorizing offers by type, and significantly simplifying the process of reviewing and editing stand-by times. This complete overhaul of the platform underscores our commitment to boosting transparency and efficiency for technicians.
Impact — 008
The launch of the new app wasn't without it's initial growing pains but once technicians settled in and we started to get data, we found that we moved the needle on many of our stated goals across the different touch points of the field service experience.
Reflection — 009
Redesigning HelloTech's technician app was both a new venture and a deep dive into the complexities of mobile UX. Had to deal with challenges and obscure details that never came up before like the complexities of data-fetching and loader states for a native mobile app. The stakes were high given the app's dependence on a stable internet connection and location services.
Also, making changes to an interface that users had become accustomed to added another layer of complexity. Overall, this project was a great learning opportunity for balancing technical constraints, user behavior, with business objectives.
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