Mobile App Design: ThirdSpace
Case Study
Overview
Prompt:
Research, prototype, test, and validate an idea for a brand-new mobile application. The creation must solve a real and clearly identified need for users in their everyday lives.
Role: UX/UI Designer
Contributors: 3 Additional UX/UI Designers
Tools: Figma, Miro, InVision, Trello, Google Workspace
Since the start of 2020, there has been a shift in popularity in working and studying from home resulting in numerous stories of roommates and pets becoming involved in the workday. What if there was a way to work from somewhere else that is not an office, but also not your home? ThirdSpace is an app that allows you to create a reservation at a place like a coffee shop, library or bookstore and filter through your preferences on the environment that mean the most to help your productivity. Find a home away from home, or an office away from the office, or a place that means you don’t have your dog begging you to throw the ball, and count on ThirdSpace to help you reserve your spot.
Problem:
Problem:
People who work from home or study for schoolwork want to find a low-cost and comfortable place outside of their office or home to study and work.
Solution:
Third Space is an app that assists young professionals in finding low-cost places to work/study for an extended period of time, in an environment that comfortably allows them to accomplish their work and study needs.
Assumption:
This solution is created in a bubble and allows for abstract business models.
Empathize
User Research
Research Question:
How and where do people looking to study or work outside of their home or office find a place to do so?
Objectives:
-
Understand what types of additional places people go to study/work.
-
Discover how people find these places.
-
Understand why people choose the places they go.
User Interviews
Process: Conduct 5 interviews through phone calls/video calls with professionals that are 20-28 years old who work or study from home.
Interview Quotes
“Sometimes libraries may have different hours, and I'm not sure Google Maps is that up-to-date. No, I have to go to the libraries website to check. And I also don't know if it is open to the public. You might need a student ID to get in.”
“Sometimes you just need a change of scenery, to inspire you, you know, change your mood.”
Affinity Diagram
Results:
-
Users want to be able to have amenities like coffee, snacks, WiFi, large enough tables for work space, and to know how busy the place is before arriving.
-
Young professionals are often in smaller living situations resulting in a combined area for work and living.
-
The ability to go to a new space provides a balance of home and work.
-
Typically looking to go a new place for a duration of 2-4 hours.
Competitive Analysis
Understanding the current market: Google Maps, WeMeet place, Yelp, New York Public Library App
Define
User Persona
Problem Statement
Working professionals and students need a place outside of their home or office that supports their work needs, provide a comfortable environment, and will allow an individual to stay for multiple hours to achieve their work or successfully study.
User Insight
Ashley, a motivated, young professional at the start of her career, needs a place to work outside of her home or office because her city apartment doesn’t have enough space for an office set up, causing her to blur the lines between work and home life resulting in less constructive work time.
Ideation
Storyboard
User Journey Map
Brainstorm
User Flow
Storyboard
What encouraged Ashley to want to work outside of her home?
While this story is highly entertaining, it is based in real events from an experience shared in a user interview. The personal nature of sharing a home with roommates during the work day proved an exciting journey to encourage Ashley to look for some separation from work and home.
User Journey Map
How does this scenario translate into opportunity?
Brainstorming of Features & Prioritization of Ideas
How will the user go from wishing to find a place to arriving at the third space?
Synthesizing the user research in the context of the user journey, the team organized the thoughts into a prioritization matrix. This process allowed to sift out the most important elements of the function of the app.
Key Takeaway
After a group distillation discussion, we identified that the main features that our app will provide is to search based on preferences for the space and the ability to make a seat reservation to provide confirmation for the experience of going to a third destination.
User Flow
How will a user interact with our app?
Note: Showing the final version of the user flow after multiple iterations.
Changes reflecting in this version:
-
Moved coaching screens to after account creation
-
Made coaching screens look less like an alert
-
Added reset password
-
Brought users with an account to home screen faster
-
Re-organized search flow with iterations made in button functionality on the home screen.
-
Removed duplicates of date and time selection.
-
Allowed for confirmation of date and time selection.
-
Adjusted back buttons
Prototype
Low-Fi Wireframes
My Role: Search & Filter Screens
I lead the search and filter experience. My goal was to allow the user to feel in control of the environment of the space they select while providing structure to the filters. This relieves the user of imagining the space from scratch, but gives them power to find their must haves. This version depicted becomes iterated later on using drop downs to focus the user on one section at a time.
Hi-Fi Wireframes
Test
Usability Testing
Online tests through screen share to visually see where hang-ups occurred and hear about ideas for improvement.
Iterations to be made from feedback:
-
Adjust onboarding to bring users to home screen faster, as well as improve coaching experience.
-
Logo brings user to home screen at all times
-
Date & Time Flow: Wouldn’t want to show user unavailable places, added it sooner in selection process.
-
Reconsidered Search: Felt like too much on one page & redesigned selection process to become drop downs.
-
Additionally: Fixed typos, united design differences, closed all loops, and used fresh eyes to improve design.
Iterate
Feedback from Usability Testing
.png)
Recenter button was repurposed to be the favorites button. Allows users to easily access their favorite meet up locations with no confusion.
Users also felt that the search page felt crowded with the amount of content on the search page.
Filters got a designated button with more filtering options for a less crowded search page.
Conclusion
Ideas for Future Development
-
Explore Map Icons Features: Make them clickable and linked to a place to show a short preview.
-
Allow for the map to be interactive and responsive.
-
Consider a Rewards Tracker to encourage additional use of the app.
Reflections
This was a great team to work with with each person holding strengths in different arenas. Throughout this project I found myself contributing heavily in tracking our organization, time management, and deliverables which resulted in an efficient use our work time together. This case study showed the importance keeping updated of iterations on user flows. As our ideas grew and evolved, our user flow needed to reflect the changes and was challenging to keep up to date. Additionally, our team would have benefitted from conduting further research with more directly relevant questions. Due to the personal experience with working from home that we have all faced, there were times where we needed to check in whether our insight was a result of personal experience of through user research. In general, the team was excited about the outcome of this case study was a great feat for our first group case study!
