HYR: MOBILE Redesign
My Role: UX Researcher/Designer/Team Lead
Team: 3 UX Designers
Duration: 3 weeks
Project Status: Complete Company: Hyr Inc.
Background
HYR is a mobile platform that connects hospitality businesses like restaurants, bars, hotels, and nightclubs with spot labor called “talent”. The talent works hourly paid shifts, on-demand and as independent 1099 contractors.
Hypothesis
Food & beverage as well as Hospitality and Entertainment businesses struggle to find workers for spot employment — it is either time consuming or difficult to find someone last minute.
How might we provide an easy and quick way to connect willing and trustworthy talent with businesses who need the labor.
Business Goal & Process
After speaking with our client and considering a limited timeframe we focused on the “business posting a shift” flow. Our goal was to increase shifts posted by new business users by evaluating how intuitive it is for them to setup an account, post work and to operate within the app.
The client was in the midst of their own redesign, mid-fidelity wireframes were provided to us for Round 1 testing. Hi-fidelity wireframes created by the UX team were tested in Round 2.
Discovery
Internal Interviews
Head developer at HYR as well as Sales and Support staff provided us with feedback from the current business-side power users.
Key Takeaways
No repeat usage when HYR worker didn’t show up to work the shift.
Users had problems with being charged prior to speaking with selected talent.
The most frequent shifts currently being posted by businesses: Bartender, Brand ambassadors, Dishwasher, Host.
External Interviews
2 Owners of a Hospitality Consulting Group in New York.
Businesswoman who ran her own hotel in a small town for over 15 years.
Two small restaurant owners as well as employees in food & beverage.
An International coffee chain shift manager.
Key Takeaways
The worker needs to show up! — subsequent cancellation was the absolute number 1 requirement and frustration.
Trust, training, and communication prior to the shift.
For shifts that required more experience: The worker’s background, prior high-end restaurant experience, and most importantly references mattered most.
For shifts that required less experience: Personality mattered most.
Define
Personas
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
We analyzed competitors to see where our client HYR fit in the market. The big differentiator among competitors was that HYR is more concerned with providing the marketplace for Talent to find Businesses rather the actually vetting workers an assigning them shifts like the competitors do.
The current HYR app is represented with faded logo. The HYR redesigned wireframes contain more worker background, skill and certification vetting.
Usability Testing Round 1
Determine how easy and intuitive it is for a business owner to open the app for the first time, setup an account, post work and select and pay for workers.
Extras:
- Determine a solution for switching between the talent and business profiles.
- Test if the users understand the meaning of a primary and backup worker.
Re-Design
Testing found a confusing tab bar and navigation which had to be rebuilt.
Users believed the “Shifts” button should be a list of the shifts they posted prior— instead it was shifts posted by other businesses.
Users believed “My Work” should be their upcoming shifts — instead it was shifts they posted prior.
Users struggled to identify where to switch profiles and edit credit card information. The “Settings” button was hard to find and the “Profiles” tab bar icon was confusing.
U Points, points collected by using the app were confusing— the name was not intuitive— changing the name to HYR points made more sense to users.
Usability Testing Round 2
ROUND 1 was a test of HYR provided redesign screens vs. ROUND 2 UX Team redesign proposed screens.
As observed in testing the new wireframes designed by the UX team, the difficulty of navigating through the app decreased in most cases.
DeliverY - Prototype
Summary of changes delivered to client
Conclusion and UX Redesign Proposal
A simplified tab bar where the current icons “Shifts” and “Work” are replaced with “Home”and “+Shift”. The “Chat” button remains however the old “Profiles and “Settings” buttons are combined into just one “Settings” tab bar button.
A simplified Sign-on process when registering for the first time.
Profile switching within settings and a differentiating color theme for Talent vs. Business.
Since “Settings” on the tab bar now encompasses both the current “Profile” and “Settings” options it eliminated the confusion between profile switching and the actual account and payment settings seen in testing.
A cleaner homepage where posted shifts as well as additional shift options can be seen.
Other general recommendations the team proposed HYR to consider
Review their redesigned wireframes as they may be diverging from the current brand image and align it with our interview findings — Research showed that HYR should focus more on low-experience talent as high-experience shifts require more vetting from the talent provider.
Promote HYR as an event planning solution — Event planning, as confirmed in interviews, is a great opportunity to hire cheaper low-experience talent.
Show multiple profiles (Business” or “Talent”) with more clarity to users — the company is convinced it needs a switch in app between the talent and worker (many competitors have separate apps for each) we propose they make this switch more intuitive for the user.