Overview
With remote work becoming more and more popular, having a second or even third workspace is becoming more and more desirable. Working in libraries, hotels, cafes, and restaurants is becoming more common for many remote and hybrid workers. The focus of this app is to help people find, discover, and review the many different workspace locations in their city, without having to spend any money either.
Problem
26% of U.S. employees work remotely, as of 2022. There are expected to be 36.2 million American employees working remotely by 2025 and 16% of U.S. companies are fully remote. Many workers want to work outside of their own homes, but do not want to spend hundreds of dollars at a WeWork space that they may end up not even enjoying. People need a reliable way to find reviewed spaces that fit their specific needs.
Goal
Create a product MVP of an End to End application. The application should allow users to discover, review, favorite, and travel to work locations that suit their needs, without spending any money reserving a space or room.
Duration
4 Weeks
80 Hours
Roles
UI/UX Designer
Brand Designer
Product Designer
Deliverables
MVP
Prototype
Industry
Lifestyle
Remote Work
How it Works
1 - Onboarding
After making an account using just an email and password, the first step is to figure out what your perfect workspace is. Our onboarding process is thorough without being overwhelming, asking about key preferences and choosing a location.
2 - Discovery
Next, it’s time to discover some hidden gems. WrkSpace will prioritize showing users spaces based on their initial preferences. Users can choose to view in Map mode or List mode, and can get further information on the space detail page.
3 - Favorite, Review, and Head Out!
Once users have read up and checked the vibe of the space, it’s encouraged to add them to your favorites. Once added, the space will remain under the favorites tab. Users are also heavily encouraged to review the space and read what other users are saying about the space too. All that’s left to do is head out! (using the directions icon)
Tip - users can do a ‘vibe check’ by clicking the icons shown beneath each space title to get a quick summary of what the space has to offer.
Project Timeline
Similarly to most UX projects, the design process is never simply linear. My design process features multiple areas for revision, iteration, and improvement along the entire process.
Research
User Interviews - Competitor Analysis - Persona Creation
Key Interview Findings
Most remote workers (80%) say that they like to work outside their home office at least once a week.
People’s main concerns for finding places to work were spacing(seating), Wi-Fi good enough for video calls, and food/coffee quality.
Majority of remote workers (60%) like to try new places when they can for work, the remainder (40%) prefer a reliable space they know works for them.
People’s main detractors for using flex space services like WeWork or DeskPass were cost and not needing the services more than a few times a month.
Remote workers seemed to like to work alone as much as they liked to work with people, most (60%) said it depended on the type of work they were doing that day.
User Interviews
5 ideal users (remote workers, travelers, explorers) were interviewed about their working habits, how they find workspaces, and what their ideal space would have. Key findings and insights were compiled to highlight pain points and user needs.
User Personas
After collecting & understanding customers' needs, frustrations, and motivations, I created 2 user personas with different Archetypes. These personas were used in making design decisions and gave the broad scope of users a visual representation.
Competitor Analysis
WrkSpace’s Competitors are flex workspace companies that are solving a similar problem. Brands like WeWork and Deskpass are direct competitors that fill different niches than WrkSpace does.
Competitors
The 3 chosen competitors that WorkSpace will gain the most insight from are other remote office space apps. The apps chosen are WeWork, LetsWork, and DeskPass. Key findings from researching these stores can be found below the logo images.
Key Competitor Analysis Findings
All competitors are not free services, some offer day passes while others require subscription services.
Competitors all offer individual, small group, and large business services. They seem to be prioritizing small and large businesses as clients over individuals.
All competitors have a key company value listed as ‘community’, further targeting larger groups as clients.
The more spaces a company has, the more robust its filtering system is.
No competitors have an area for reviews of the spaces local to their applications.
Define
User Flow - Task Flow - Wireframes
User Flow
A Userflow was created to illustrate how a first-time users would navigate the app, and to illustrate the different paths and journeys the user could take to fully utilize the app to its full potential.
Task Flow
A task flow was utilized to represent a user’s journey through the discovery and favoriting process that the app aims to prioritize. Reading quality reviews is a pillar of the WrkSpace formula, and gives the users unbiased information on what to expect when choosing a workspace. Additionally, favoriting spaces is highly encouraged and the most useful way for users to save spaces.
Wireframes
Wireframes contain the blueprint for the overall product and begin as the base structure for the entire site. For this project, I prioritized making the wireframes at the highest fidelity to begin with.
Style
Style Tiles - Icons
The WrkSpace Look
For the overall look of this app, it was important to blend both facets of the concept. The app should be viewed as both a valuable discovery tool, as well an entertaining platform to read real takes on spaces by our users. Because of these facets, the look had to be professional and clean, while also not losing the fun in finding a new favorite spot.
Style Tiles
A style tile is an extremely useful visual communication tool used to visualize the look of the website or page. I created multiple style tiles to experiment with the playful and bold direction that the store had, and ended up choosing the style that was inspired by Kokorokoko’s outdoor mural painted on their low-key back entrance to the store.
Icons
Icons were heavily utilized in this product. There are icons for the many different vibes that a space could have, ranging from printers to Instagram-worthy, to pet-friendly. It was important that the icon remained legible, yet fun and recognizable.
Prototype & Findings
Prototype
Testing the MVP for usability and intuitiveness was an essential step in the design process. An MVP prototype was created to test the usability of the favorites feature and how intuitive the favorite feature would be to new users.
Prototype Link
Findings
Utilizing the ‘heart’ icon was instantly recognizable, but users would often see the icon in the navigation and immediately jump straight to it. Error messages were added to the favorites screen, on both list and map view, to assist the users in the process.
Next Steps
Hand Off - Moving Forward
Handoff
New would be hand off to developers, checking consistency, spacing, and usability.
Creating a Ui kit for the devs to reference, having spacing guides, typography guides, and all Ui elements available to them.
Lastly, making any changes that developers would need to push the app out faster, taking out more complex design areas if necessary.
Moving Forward
Moving forward, a smart business and product decision was to start marketing to cafes and businesses that are trying to get more working clientele.
Offering a ‘Promoted’ area to be shown first when users are making space searchers.
Incentivizing high-quality reviews will also benefit the app’s community as a whole, building a reliable community of peers.
