Short on time? Check out the pitch deck for a quick look at the final outcome of this project.
The Setup
The Users:
Angie’s List “Pros” or service providers, the backbone of the Angie’s List ecosystem
The consumer, they use Angie’s List and write reviews that drive future bookings for pros
Problem Space:
Reviews are crucial to the success of pros on Angie’s List
Current review collection methods are extremely antiquated
Our goal is to design a simple and fast review collection tool that can be used by pros in the field
My Role:
Interaction designer
Worked closely with PM, Engineering team and Visual Designer throughout the process
Storyboards, sketches, wireframes, prototypes and testing
Project Duration: 6 weeks
The Problem Space
Pros (Service Providers) need a tool to collect reviews in the field and Angie’s List is way behind the times, often requiring pros to use paper forms. The tool must be simple and fast, and work well when pros are in the field (the “driveway test”). This design utilized no back-end resources and was intentionally lightweight to reduce turnaround time for development.
To ensure a satisfying and useful end-to-end experience, I worked closely with research, strategy and the B2B product team to deliver an experience tailor-made to suit the needs of our service providers.
Research & Insights
To better understand the needs of our users we started by interviewing more than a dozen of the most active pros in the Indianapolis market. These pros had been using Angie’s List for at least three years and had a stellar record and reputation with their employees.
After the interviews, we chose several pros to take part in participatory design sessions. In these sessions we worked with the pro to sketch the system from beginning to end. These sessions helped to surface pain points
Co-Design Session
Participatory design sessions helped us to understand the needs of the user and identified the most prominent pain points that pros encounter when attempting to collect reviews in the field.
“How can we modernize the review collection process without disrupting the work of our service providers?”
Key Findings
Immediate Value
Participants saw immediate value and potential in the Request a Review app. Two asked when it would be released, and nearly all said they would use it themselves and/or let office staff or a long-time employee(s) use it.
Quick Fixes
A number of quick fixes found in testing were included in the final designs, including reducing copy and escalating user to completion of primary task.
Future Features
4 participants mentioned a tracking feature, such as showing a list and/or status of sent requests. Another mentioned how useful an invoicing tool could be.
Asking Customers
A number of factors help determine when and how a business requests reviews today, and who from the business makes the request. And a couple participants said all their field employees ask for reviews today.
Reasons why providers don’t have field employees ask for reviews range from feeling a customer is unable to determine right away if they are completely satisfied, to the fact that field employees know English only as second language, which is considered a barrier to directly asking for a review.
Sketching the System
After understanding the problem space, we began to sketch the system. We knew that we had limited engineering resources and no backend resources, so we were going to take a very scrappy approach.
The system seemed simple on the surface, but we needed to make sure there were no gaps or roadblocks for our users. Review collection is crucial to the success of a pro on the Angie’s List platform, and we needed this product to be a seamless experience from release.
Story Mapping
We started by mapping the full story between the pro, the customer and the product.
User Flow
Next we mapped the full experience using mid-fidelity wireframes. We then aligned these screens to the scenarios in our story map to ensure there were no gaps.
After all of the screens were aligned with the user’s story, we built a mid-fidelity prototype using Invision. We ran usability tests with this prototype on six users from our target demographic. Based on the feedback from the usability sessions, we tweaked the wireframes and then moved on to high-fidelity work.
The Design
The high-fidelity mockups went through one last round of user testing. After the testing, we started production work. The design and engineering teams worked very closely throughout the development process in order to ensure a quick turnaround.
The design was initially released through a beta program to some of the most active pros in the Indianapolis and Des Moines markets.
User Feedback
“They could send the request before they even leave the driveway.”
“We only have 200 reviews. We should have 1,000. This could help us get there.”
Thanks
Special thanks to my team, without them this process would have been impossible:
Ed Rice, Strategy
John Dvorchak, Visual
Lauren Bowers, Research