PostUp

A mobile app to help remote workers quickly and easily find great coffee shops and public places to work from

Role

I was the sole UX designer for this design sprint project.

My responsibilities included

  • User testing and research

  • Interaction and visual design

  • Creating user maps and storyboarding

Duration

5 days (Feb 2023)

Problem

As a busy, on-the-go worker, it can be time consuming to find a place nearby to work.

Even when they do find a place, it might not have the right amenities or environment needed for a productive experience.

Research

So why is it so hard to find a decent spot to work?

For this project, the user research, personas, and interviews were provided to me. Below are some highlights and insights I gathered from it.

“It takes a lot of jumping back and forth between sites and apps. Most of the services that are out there are for people that are deciding if they want to eat or drink at a place, not work. So it takes a lot of searching and interpretation to find out the right place for me.”

“I usually need to jump on the computer for a video chat - so, I need to make sure the Wifi is good, and that there isn’t too much background noise.”

“I know a lot of places to go near me, but I’m often in other parts of the city and need a place nearby to post up for an hour or two between meetings.”

One interview participant also pointed out how they needed to manually filter through places to see if there was seating or certain amenities available, such as a good Wifi connection, outlets, or bathrooms.

Solution

Finding a suitable environment is hard to track reliably without finding out in-person. This can be particularly frustrating for someone who needs to take a quick call with a client, or for someone who is seeking heads-down time for productive work. Based on those insights, I realized that there needed to be a faster, easier way to find these quiet public places to work at before arriving there.

Day 1 - Understand/Map

After synthesizing the research, I wanted to understand what the end-to-end experience would be like for a user. I created a user map with the following steps:

  • Open the app to find a place

  • Turn on their location (GPS) on their phone to enable current location accuracy

  • Show a map of nearby coffee shops or public places, along with a corresponding list that displays more information of those places

  • Gilter through places by amentity, seat availability, and check to see busy hours; alternatively, they could look through each place to read reviews from other remote workers

  • Choose a place to work and then head over there

I then wanted to break down the main solution even further to come up with more specific solutions:

  • How might we quickly identify the user’s needs when they are in a rush?

  • How might we show users how busy the place is and the layout of the area before they arrive there?

  • How might we inform users of the work environment quality?

Day 2 - Sketching

Lightning Demos

As part of the Day 2 structure for the GV design sprint, I tried to find existing applications with relevant interactions and features that would fit the PostUp experience. While I found the search and list feature in Google Maps very helpful, I found some inspiration from applications I wasn’t expecting it from.

Google Maps

  • Check the proximity of coffee shops through the map

  • Seeing a list of places by swiping up

  • Familiar for people that regularly use a map or GPS application

Instagram

  • The tagged location feature shows people’s Stories or posts under a specific location

Airbnb

  • Reviews and ratings for particular aspects of the stay

  • A photo gallery to show the different parts of the stay

Crazy 8s

Once I found some inspiration through the lightning demos activity, I spent 8 minutes coming up with 8 different ideas for the most critical screens.

It was important for the filtering process to make sense, since finding a place that fulfills the needs of the user was the main idea behind the solution. I wanted it to be easy for users to filter through places, while also making it easy to see what these places had positive reviews for through keyword tags on the place’s listing. Since this was a solo design sprint, I came up with a few sketches and eventually landed on one that I was satisfied with.

Day 3 - Decide

For Day 3, I took my final solution sketch that I created from Day 2 and expanded on it more by using a storyboard. The storyboard helped me see how a user would interact with the application would flow from beginning to end – starting from when they download the application up until they choose a place to work.

Day 4 - Prototype

Basing my designs off of Day 3’s storyboard, I created several high-fidelity designs within 8 hours to work on it. I would be showing the prototypes to my usability testing participants the next day, so I wanted it to look like a realistic application.

Walkthrough video of PostUp prototype

The main feature I wanted to showcase was the ability to see and filter through different tags, since the user is interested in quickly finding a place to work remotely that fits their needs.

Since PostUp’s brand color is a bright green, I chose to use it as an accent color throughout the designs, such as for the directions button and the checkboxes. I added purple as well to distinguish the tags and filters.

Day 5 - Test

I conducted 5 remote moderated usability tests with participants who had experience either working or studying remotely from coffee shops or public places. I wanted to test for a few things:

  • The filtering feature - how would users approach finding a place to work that fits their needs when they are in a rush?

  • Finding specific ratings (such as amenities, seating, environment, and work-friendliness)

  • Helpfulness of a photo gallery to show a place’s layout

Results

  • A few users wanted to swipe up on the map’s modal to browse the options and details more, however I didn’t have that available to interact within the prototype.

  • One user noted that she probably would not use this application because of its similarity to Google Maps, so she wouldn’t feel the need to have an additional maps application. This led me to wonder if having too much of a similar user experience would feel redundant.

  • One user pointed out that there wasn’t a back navigation button on one of the screens, so that would need to be added in another iteration to make navigation easier.

  • All users successfully found a place’s ratings. They were also able to find the photo gallery or at least express how they would find it  (some users were trying to click on the photos in the map’s modal).

Overall, most users found it intuitive, easy to use, and user-friendly. Most users remarked on its similarity to Google Maps or Yelp, so it was a familiar user experience for them.

“From a student perspective, I would definitely rather use an application that’s more catered to specifically what I need, which is just finding a coffee shop nearby vs Yelp or Google […] which will show other things so I have to mix up my search terms to find what I’m looking for.”

Learnings

I found this design sprint project really fun, and it helped reinforce my understanding of the design process.

If I could go back, I would want to make it a more unique experience, but the beauty of the design sprint is to find solutions within a short amount of time, so it made me focus less on getting it perfect right from the start.

Since this was a solo 5 day sprint, there were times where I thought it would be helpful to have someone else take a look at my sketches or prototypes, so I can only imagine how much more engaging the design sprint would be when it’s a collaborative effort!