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Hire Me App

A mobile app intended to help entrepreneurs and hobbyists alike to sell or trade their products and/or skills to the local community around them.

ROLE 

UX / UI Designer

COMPANY

Brainstation (School project)

TYPE

B2C SaaS

SHIPPED

Dec 2016 (2 month project)

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • User research

  • Information Architecture

  • Visual Design

TOOLS

SurveyMonkeyLogo.png

Survey Monkey

OptimalWorkshop.png

Optimal Workshop

Sketch_Logo.png

Sketch

HireMe App .jpeg

The HireMe App final interface

HireMe App.png

Chosen colour palette

History

After completing my diploma at BCIT for Digital Design and Development, I wanted to further my education to specialize in UX Design. With instructors that come directly from top jobs in the industry I knew Brainstation was a great place to achieve this. My instructor was the Director of UX from SAP, I learnt an incredible amount from her and this was the final project she had the class do. We all invented our own app which we had to design end to end. 

About

HireMe is an app that creates a network of users wishing to work for themselves. It is a directory of people with skills that can be taught, homemade products that can be sold, and/or professional services that can be provided. Users of these services can type in a keyword into its search engine and it returns a list of people in your desired area that will provide you with what you are looking for. An example of this could be EG: A person has a hobby of rollerblading every day and has decided to offer lessons. Someone else wants to learn how and finds them on HireMe. That person can either pay for a lesson or they can discuss an exchange of skills IE: Guitar lessons for rollerblading lessons. 

 

Each profile page has useful information such as a description of work to be provided, images for product to be sold, reviews from previous customers, geographical coverage, ways to contact the user, etc. By using HireMe, you are attaining a much more useful way to locate and contact the perfect person to help you with your project, you are also attaining a far better way to advertise your own business and the ability to exchange these services interchangeably between users as an alternative to monetary payment.  

The Problem

There are services out there like Fiverr and Upwork but they focus on Tech Freelancers and are not great for networking having being such a specific target audience. There is a need for a community of people to exchange skills, to teach, to learn, to sell, to buy, whatever it is they want to do. 

The Solution

  • Provide an app where you can find someone who can provide you help with practically anything you want

  • Bring community together by providing a way for people to meet and make friends

  • Allow people to pay by swapping services 

My Process

  1. Understanding the users (survey)

  2. Building personas

  3. Information architecture

  4. Wireframes

  5. Hi-Fi Mockups

Understanding The Users

By surveying 85 people with 10 specific questions (please see: SurveyMonkey results) I was able to determine several things about the usage of the app: The main target audience is Males and Females between the age of 25-44. People from several countries; in big cities, and small towns found the app useful to them. 65.88% of all respondents already are, or want to work for themselves. Further surveying from the same 65.88% respondents at the prototype stage would be favourable in terms of the design of the HireMe but was not feasible at this time.

HireMe App Survey.jpeg

Some of the questions and their responses

Personas

Two major groups or "personas" were produced. One that wanted to full-on start their own business full time and exchange services with other trades people, and one that wanted to work for herself on the side and shop for other products. Both between the ages of 25-44, both with goals of producing earnings.

Card Sorting

Roughly 20 people responded to this exercise. They were asked to sort each card with their own logical thought process. The results in figure A were the most popular response and therefore the apps site map was determined by this. 

Marketing media assets & examples

Information Architecture

This site map was designed based on the card sorting excersise and familiar design practices. It is useful to draw out the layout of the site to visualize how each link and page will be placed throughout the app.

Experience Mapping

In this experience map, you can see a HireMe user going through a possible scenario (a new user looking to hire another user to help with a project in a positive experience. While not all experiences with other users will be a positive one, that is what customer reviews will be useful for). Opportunities to improve HireMe were found in each stage of the process because of this exercise.    

HireMe-ExperienceMap.jpeg
Wireframes

After sketching several possible navigation layouts, this one appeared the most logical with the data we were given from the surveys. The main navigation is at the bottom of the app (Home/Search, Messaging, Personal Calendar, and Personal Profile page. Secondary navigation  appears 1/3 of the way down the page to direct the user through each screen. 

HireMe-WireframingSketch.jpeg
Pains

  • This was a hypothetical app that was never brought to fruition so there was no chance to complete the full end to end process (testing, delivery, analytics)

  • While the survey and card sorting participants were real, I couldn't get any qualitative research from them with the time constraints of the project

Gains

  • This was a hypothetical app that was never brought to fruition so there was no chance to complete the full end to end process (testing, delivery, analytics)

  • While the survey and card sorting participants were real, I couldn't get any qualitative research from them with the time constraints of the project

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