Many people experience hesitation and uncertainty when using software to help make the everyday running of their business better. The CEO asked us to design and improve what is already on the market.
Firstly we started with a focus group to get an idea of the common pain points experienced by business owners looking to use software to help make the everyday running of the business easier and what influences their decision-making process. The focus group had three business owners and two managers. We were able to begin synthesizing data from the focus group.
Some common themes we noticed early on: many participants were interested in not having to put the same information in when an employee leaves or gets promoted. Given the information from the focus group, we did a competitive analysis to deep-dive into the competition. I wanted to identify specific ways in which we could streamline the booking experience, and learn how our competitors do the same thing. I wanted to pin down the biggest pain points for business owners that could easily be addressed with an app.
Affinity diagram aggregating the needs wants, and pain points of the focus group. Unfulfilled interest in other software was due to an inability of having the same problem that no one has given a solution for the pain points that came up in the focus group.
Concerns about inputting the same information, restricting employees within the software, and general uncertainty about keeping multiple salons separate were also factors that prevented business owners from changing software/using software to help run their business.
Our user research uncovered clear pain points that we needed to address with our design. First, we would need to make it easy for users to input information and not have to keep putting that information in when an employee leaves. Our app would also need to make it simple to keep multiple salons separate and simplify the process of navigating to the calender as that will be the most used page within the app. The fact that these frustrations were mentioned repeatedly in the focus group indicated that we needed to improve the information architecture from what is already out there.
To address the business goals and enhance the overall experience. Creating user flows. We also created flows for booking appointments, adding staff, creating positions (jobs), setting up an account, and changing salons.
Since our users wanted a way to not input the same information within the app, we opted to find a solution on how this could be achieved. In addition, it would save the business owner time and improve the service that is offered to their clients as they would have more time.
Giving employees permission to only access parts of the software that is needed for the employee to complete their job would be set within the job position that is set up.
While sketching key screens for creating user flows, I drew inspiration from similar companion and job sites that most directly addressed user wants and needs uncovered in our user research.
I created lo-fidelity prototypes to perform usability testing of each user flow and validate our designs. The set of user tasks was comprehensive in addition to setting up an account, adding appointments, creating positions then adding staff to the position.
We could only qualitatively assess how well our design accomplished the goals defined in the project brief. We performed usability testing and conducted follow-up interviews to evaluate the effectiveness of our design and found that the updates exceeded expectations, particularly about not entering the same information and how easy it is to manage different salons at the same time.
Overall, the features we designed were described as helpful, and effective in managing the user’s business, so I can confidently say we accomplished our goals.
