brandingUXFreelanceiOSProduct DesignUIWork-in-progress
OVERVIEW

Yumani

An app that designed to help local students in your area to earn side income, and hire student to help you perform different tasks.

/ ROLE

Visual Design LeadUI/UXUser ResearchProduct DesignProject Management

/ TEAM

Jason ChongFranky ChenNick Mounouchos

/ TOOLS

FigmaIllustratorPhotoshop

/ DURATION

8 months - work in progress

Need

Problem

  1. Student needs quick cash during school break and holiday.
  2. People in neighbourhood need help on small tasks.
Solution

Product

  1. Student can undertake different task for users post with the Yumani application
  2. Student can also post what they can offers to other users
  3. Home owners/users can post different tasks they need help with on the platform
Target

User base

Besides students who wants to earn cash, the other group of users who this app targets would be user group that are incapable of doing tasks due to age or disability, or time is a constrain for them to do small task.

An app that brings students and people together for benefit of everyone.

Onboarding

Once individual downloaded the app, it starts with a few welcome message, since there are two groups of targeted user, there are two ways of signing up an account

Posting a task / services

1. Users can post their requests that they need help with
2. Student can offer their services to the users on the app

See the design challenge

Tasks

All tasks can be accessed from the main screen. Student can see all the different tasks in map view as well.

See the design challenge

Services

Users can see all the different services student post on Yumani. Student can categorize their service in different package tiers.

See the design challenge

Status

Student / Users can both see where they are currently at in the task/services details in a timeline status

Bidding a task

Student and task owner can negotiate the best price that is suitable for both parties.

See the design challenge

Dashboard

Users can see the different tasks they post / upcoming tasks on Yumani, and all the offers they receive. If they purchased any services from students, they can also track the progress here. Users can also see their rating on how other interact with them, which would affect other people when seeing their tasks on Yumani.

The toggle with the student mode is for when the user is both a task owner, and a student to switch modes.

In student mode, student can see what tasks they made an offer towards, upcoming task they need to perform, an overview on how much they earn, task they performed. Also a detail list view on the services they post.

Profile

User can tell others their background, skills, certifications, anything about them that makes them a good fit for the job.

Verification

User can take picture of their identification to earn a verification badge on the platform

See the design challenge

Design Challenge

Task Categories

Individuals can post different tasks on the platform, and because there are so many different type of tasks user might request. Instead of having them to just type the name of the task, I want to have the flexibility to group them, and be able to filter them.

So I brainstormed few ideas and discussed with the client after research on different platform and ran a competitor analysis:

  1. A cater full list of all the different categories we think users might post.
  2. Users can type different tags for the post, and we can filter by the tags

Option 1

Option 2

However:

  1. For option 1, it’s great that we can control what the user post on the platform, but users might need help that the predefined list doesn’t have, it’s also hard to have one category that describes the whole task user needs help with.
  2. For option 2, this is widely use in other listing platforms, such as Kijii, eBay. It’s proven to be one of the best solutions, however since this is a starting app, This is not a great solution to execute out mainly because different user would type different tags, and we don’t want the first batch of the users download the app, and don’t see much content on the app. For example: some might tag: web design, some might tag website, and some might just type marketing.

Solutions:
The solution towards this challenge is to filter them by themes. We group all the possible categories in to multiple theme. (This way is easier to find the right category, other them having everything jumble into one list) Then user can select all the related services (like a multiple checkbox). User can also add more than one theme, (So let’s say user select Web design, user can also select marketing, or logo design)

This way we can neatly categorize all the services, and we can also display the tasks in more than one categories, making the app more fruitful.

Design Challenge

Verification

How can we make Yumani a safe environment for the users?

It’s hard to control what users do when they perform their task. We don’t want any harassment towards the students/users who request/perform the task/service in the app.

So the clients and me brainstormed few ideas after research on how different type of industry ran their security check towards the users:

Uber/Uber Eats:
Drivers must undergo a multi-step safety screening that checks for their driving record, criminal records

AIRBNB:
Runs a background check, and make sure guests aren’t in the national wanted list, sex offender registries. Airbnb profile always encourage users to have a profile section with a verified contact information, like phone number/email section should always be filled.

TURO:

Turn allows different guest to rent their personal car, so we also investigate on how the app works, user need to take a picture with their ID before they drive their car away, making sure it’s the same person as they claim to be online. They also have to verify their identification on the app by uploading their ID on it

Ideas:

  1. They can pay for a background check and earn a badge on the app. (We can connect this with existing background check company) They usually charge $20 / person
  2. They can upload their ids, and we can run a manual check between our backend to make sure they are the same person they claim to be
  3. We create a profile screens, and student/user can fill more details about themselves so they know who they will be interacting with

Solutions:
We decided to combined few of the ideas we brainstormed with, and have the actual background check process in a later phase of the app. For the MVP of the product we would have the users to upload two of their identifications on the platform. We will run a manual background check since we predict there won’t be a wide range of user at the beginning. Having students/users to pay for a background check would also stop them from using the app. And our main goal is to increase the user base on Yumani. We can’t pay for them as well because it’s at a early stage so we have a financial constrain. We also decided that users who verified would earn a “Verified badge” giving user authority to do more than users who aren’t verify. For example: users who are verified’s listing would always show up at the top before users that aren’t verified. We would also create a profile page, where user can tell others more about themselves, their skill sets, and their backgrounds.

To make Yumani a safe environment for all users. Students and users can earn a verification badge in their profile, by verifying their Identification on the app.

Design Challenge

Bidding Process

One of the main feature, our client wants in the app is to have the flexibility for all student to bid for the task (kind of like bidding e-commerce like Ebay). And students can outbid each and others so users always pay less than they indent to suggest on the platform.

Before I took over the app, the experience is to set a time for the task listing to end, and student would need to bid before a set timezone.

However, the problem is that:

  1. There won’t be a wide range of student users, it’s going to delay the offering process which leads to a fail task
  2. In the perspective of the student: the task might be under what they want. Student should also be able to negotiate for a higher price
  3. If we follow the original method, which works great if you are bidding for a services. But in this case, it doesn’t align with Yumani. Because students are providing a services, owners would want to also screen the students before choosing them to perform the task. If we set the lowest price wins the offer, then task owners won’t be able to choose the students.

Solutions

After experimenting different ideas, and interviewing different users, we decide that we put the offering/bidding process towards both parties.

Students:
A: If student is happy with the original suggested price, they can send an offer for the suggested price. Task owner than see the message prompt, and he/she can decide to accept the offer.
B: If student is not happy with the original suggested price, they can send a different offer, then Task owner can accept / decline the offer.

Task Owners:
Task owner can also send a counter offer, if they are not happy with the suggested price student offer. That way they can negotiate until a deal is made.

All actions would be performed in a chatting feature, that way student can explain why this task requires more $ than suggested.

Once they both accept the offer, task owner would come to a payment screen where Yumani would holds the money until the task is performed.

Design Challenge

Posting a task / service

The challenge is to create a form for the user to fill out that is intuitive. Instead of having everything into on page, we divided them up in multiple section, so that the user won’t feel uneasy when filling out the form.

User also have the flexibility to jump out and continue back filling later on.

A preview screen also shows what’s left to fill out in, and what’s already filled out. 

User can also duplicate an existing listing, or continued an unpublished post. 

If the listing is expired it would also show up on the unpublished screen.

The process starts with a

Kick off meeting with Client

  • They already have a low fidelity wireframe with a different freelance designer
  • Went through the initial design
-Comment, on what’s working, what’s not working in the current design
  • The original design only works with one side of the user group.

Define the problem (Brainstorm and ask client questions)

  • What do you want to achieve with this app?
  • Why do you want to create this app?
  • Who is this app for?
  • What is the problem?

I wanted to understand the intention and objective Yumani, before I dig into more user research.

User research

I start off with Card Sorting method with the client, and the team. It’s to just group all the information/insights we currently have with the application and make sure it matches the way the user think. I also conducted one on one Individual Interviews with students on what they wants and needs with this application, and also their struggle with other platforms. I conducted a survey with google form to understand more about different goals of a users.

By understanding more about users, we know that our target users:

Users

  • Time is a constrain for them
  • They don’t have time for small tasks
  • Physical ability is difficult for them (Elders)

Students

  • Get first time work experience
  • Build portfolio and practice what they learned in school (Photography, drawing, tutoring, gym training)
  • Wants more allowance
  • Want quick job

User Flow

I organized the information and touch point they would interact within the app to know what we need to get this app running
.

User

Student

Ideation

I created multiple ideas, and ideate them on Figma, talked with clients and team, and ideate what worked best for the product with feedbacks and suggestions.

Mid to High Fidelity wireframes

After finalizing my sketches, I moved forward with creating wireframes. The goal is to make everything simple and clean for the users.

Design Systems

When It comes to designing multiple screens on the app, I made sure everything in my working file is in a modular format where it can be reuse overall the app, so everything is consistent. I group them into different categories, and I also create a global style guide so the developers know what to refer to (font size, colours, icons)

Testing

With the prototype on Figma, we are in the middle of testing the product with users/clients. There are constant feedbacks, and problems we encounter therefore there are constantly changes towards the designs. 

-Ran few usability testing with students, and users. Invite them to interact with the prototype to see if they can complete specified tasks successfully and identify how long it takes to completed the task. Identify changes required to improve user performance and satisfaction. 

The developers are also on their way to finish the MVP of the product, I am working closely with them to track progress to see what they need help with and see if they align with the original design. 


Development / Work in progress

✅ Next Step

While the app is in development, I am working on the admin dashboard for admin to verify the background check of the users, tracking the payment details, statistics of how they interact the app.I am also at the beginning stage of connecting a landing page to promote the application. 


🤔Highlights

There are a lot of challenges and discussions between the client, such as how can we get a bigger user group at the beginning of the app stage.One of the biggest point I raised was that:
Should we mainly focus the worker to be “Students” and not everyone?

👍 I've learned...

I learned a lot about some of the product design decisions on small details would have a big impacts on users. Such as the reasons of including text with the icons, the animation interactions, and filling out a form.As iOS updates, I also want to see if I can make use of the dynamic island to show different variety of notifications messages.