PostUp serves freelancers & remote workers as a simple mobile app, allowing its users to share experiences and advice related to their remote-first lifestyle.
They were increasingly getting feedback around the need for a tool to help them actually locate public places to conduct their work from: digging through internet forums, scanning Google Maps and sifting through reviews, and taking arduous manual steps to try to find a suitable remote work location just wasn't cutting it anymore.
Within a swift, 5-day design sprint, I crafted and designed a solution that would allow PostUp's users to quickly and effectively find public workspaces local to them.
I designed a location-based tool that...
• Allows PostUp users to search for remote work locations using targeted filters, all within the app
• Displays reviews for each possible remote work location, imported from third parties like Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor
• Gives users the option to save their preferred remote work locations and preferences within a "Favorites" library
For a deep dive into this project and a closer look at my process, scroll down to continue reading!
At the start of the project, I reviewed existing data from past research and feedback from PostUp users so I could gain a clearer understanding of the problem space we were working within.
Some of the most insightful data came from a round of discovery interviews that was conducted prior to the start of this project, and I found the answers to one interview prompt especially noteworthy as I prepared to imagine a solution:
After reviewing all of the interview highlights, I pulled some common themes and shared sentiments that would inform my next steps:
• Not knowing a location's hours of operation and most busy times to visit is a major pain point,
• Noise levels are a concern for many remote workers, especially those who frequently take meetings, and
• Accommodations like outlets, reliable WiFi, and bathrooms are important to users.
Based on the information I had, I created one primary persona to represent PostUp's average end user.
With a clearer understanding of who these users are and the challenges they face, I could really jump in and imagine how the end-to-end solution flow might look. I visualized each step in the process of completing the most critical task: efficiently and easily finding a space to conduct remote work.
Looking ahead to the last day of the sprint, I made it my goal to recruit five participants by the end of day one to take part in a brief usability test to validate my solution design. This way, I could feel secure knowing I wouldn't need to scramble to find users to test the solution on the day-of. It also meant I would get genuine, immediate user feedback to evaluate the solution and bring that back to PostUp.
Through email outreach to a pool of contacts that met my criteria (i.e. generally align with my persona's profile) and a brief screener survey, I successfully scheduled 5 usability tests on the final day of this sprint.
Before I began to sketch out possible solutions, I conducted a speedy 25-minute round of lightning demos (i.e. I quickly reviewed three existing products that solve the problem I identified on day one).
I reviewed WeWork, Remoters.net, and WorkFrom as the top existing solutions, since each of these companies aims to help their users find resources and reliable workspaces local to them.
What I quickly found was that none of these solutions successfully addresses the entirety of the problem space that freelancers and remote workers face: these existing companies only solve one part of the bigger problem.
Next, in order to begin truly visualizing the workflow, I conducted a "Crazy 8's" exercise: I chose one critical screen from the flow I mapped out on day one, then spent 8 minutes quickly sketching 8 different versions of that screen to rapidly ideate and land on an ideal solution design.
The screen I determined to be most critical was the point where a user selects their workspace preferences, since that decision point will guide the subsequent experience.
I combined elements from my crazy 8's sketches to create a an optimized, low-fidelity sketch of the solution flow. As a starting point, I sketched out this improved version of the critical screen, along with the screens that would come before and after.
I dedicated the entirety of day three to fully defining and sketching out the complete workflow of finding a suitable place to work remotely for the day.
The experience I designed helps the user find accommodations that suit their needs, as well as considering their current or preferred location.
In this new solution, users can search for their ideal workspace either in the vicinity of their current location, or they can choose to search within an entirely different location if they choose to. I also wanted to make sure that users could compile and save the locations that best meet their preferences so they could reference them quickly in the future if needed.
With a simple yet effective flow drawn out, and with confidence in my solution, I transferred the sketches to a digital setting to create a high-fidelity prototype within Figma.
Because of the time constraints of this sprint, this prototype was created in just one day and centers around the five screens produced on day three. Even within these limits, I produced an effective model of how the experience would truly look and feel as a real product, to the real end-user.
On the final day of the sprint, I facilitated the 5 usability tests that I scheduled earlier in the week.
Each participant received the following two scenarios & tasks to complete:
The solution was generally very well received, and users did not run into any experience-breaking issues during their interactions. Several users commented on the clarity and quality of content, indicating that this would be a useful service to them if it was available.
I came away from these tests with two main insights:
• 4/5 test participants did not adjust their preferences or search filters until after they chose a location and looked through the photos, tags, and reviews
• Users would have benefited from seeing some sort of visualization of how crowded or busy a location is at different hours of the day, similar to how Google displays this information
In just one week, not only was I able to ideate and design this solution, but I was also able to validate it with real target users; this meant that PostUp would gain hugely valuable data and a solution that they could bring to life for their users, without investing much time or money into the process.
I plan to do further usability testing to continue trying to discover the most intuitive way to encourage users to input their preferences, and I'd also like to incorporate a "busiest times" element to each selected location's screen so the user can best make their decision about where to work.
