Team

2 supervisors and 8 direct reports

Team of 2 marketers, 2 researchers & 4 designers

¿So what was the problem?

HARD TO FIX EVERYDAY THINGS

And what about the user’s needs?

The main pain point of users is clear: it is extremely hard to generate leads and connections to fix everyday problems. The only available channels for customers are direct recommendations and physical yellow pages, or a confusing mixture of poorly designed web directories and Facebook pages, and referrals from social network groups and friends. For the providers, hustling and waiting is the only option.

People usually find the service providers in facebook groups like this one.

A Website & Mobile App that lets Guatemalan users research, hire, rate, and review local service providers for free, and creates new streams of formal work for thousands of service providers, both in rural and urban areas.

We were inspired by Thumbtack’s UI and market impact to learn from its wins and losses, and what where the main pains of millions of users who already depend on this technology.

To define these features and a dual Website / App ecosystem, we have made parallel efforts of UX & Market Research to streamline the process of finding the right solution for the customers and providers. We’ve used desk and field research, such as card sorting, interviews, and direct observation to create the User Personas & Journeys. We have created paradigm diagrams that map the social biases that might prevent the users from using our platform and have studied past communication strategies from competitors to understand how they used advertising to modify the collective conduct of their public to that they adopted a platform that they are not used to. Parallelly the commercial team conducted various market studies.

Basic Features

• Job Posting

• Personalized and predetermined Search & Match

• Direct communication

• Easy payment integration

• Ratings, Reviews & Recommendations

• Leaderboards

To define the name and branding we polled a thousand users to chose from different sets of names based on commonly used slang to refer to the service providing world. We have used low fidelity prototypes to test and correct the flow structure, and high fidelity prototypes to test the copywriting effectiveness and visual appeal of the branding.

So where are we now?

We have successfully created a final high fidelity prototype that has been the main tool for performing 600 user tests and acquiring the first $250,000 of financing. We have also set the guidelines for the launching ad campaign when the funds are raised. The next steps go in the direction of conducting more user testing to correct flows and actions, then connecting the platform with the payment integrations and start developing the first beta to test it with a moderated group of real providers and users.

My biggest lesson was to focus on smaller actions and achievements to, in the long run, create faster and better results. Since the team was small, everybody had to perform a million tasks simultaneously so it was easy to focus on one area and neglect others, but I found that creating strict schedules of small tasks in each area gave me more satisfaction and progress.

And the second lesson is to understand that what worked in another country or social group might never work in this one. Assuming and stereotyping without information is the biggest enemy of a pleasurable user experience.