When finding a place to work requires a modern solution.

Author

Gloria Criollo, UX/UI Researcher and Designer

Role: End-to-end research and design

About

Post Up is an application that helps remote workers find their next spot to set up. This project is part of the curriculum of Springboard to demonstrate my Google Venture skills.

Client goal was to set up the application to help remote workers find public work spaces that meet their needs, quickly and efficiently. The design sprint spanned five days, using the Google Venture approach to test a MVP and provide solid and proven results quickly.

Remote Workspaces

Over the past few years, remote work has become a vital part of many businesses worldwide. With this change has come an array of new and interesting challenges. For example, apps such as Zoom, Slack, and Google Meet have become a part of many workers’ every day lives. Remote workers have also begun to create or find their own work spaces.

This is where Post Up comes in. Team members of Post Up approached me with an opportunity: let’s help people find productive, comfortable work spaces.

Sprint Day 1 - Mapping

According to Post Up research, remote workers are trying to find places that provide a less crowded workplace, a quiet place for phone calls and meetings, and a good place for brief meetings with clients/coworkers.

Eight different users were initially interviewed with a prompt: “Tell us about your experience finding a public place to do remote work from.” Five initial categories were noted regarding what users had to say.

Users expressed concerns about ease of finding work places, finding an environment friendly to workers, finding an environment conducive to perform work, and basic amenities.

An interview with Chelsea, a remote graphic designer from NYC, provided similar results to the other eight users. During her interview, she frequently mentioned her frustration with being able to find information easily. Her priorities included:

Notes from the Post Up brief provided. 8 individuals were interviewed for their preferences.

Notes from an interview “Chelsea”, a remote graphic designer from NYC. Most of the information gathered fell into the same 5 categories.

She stated that finding out these requirements are often buried in reviews, making it difficult to ascertain when seating might be available, if amenities like WiFi are available, and if the place looks nice enough-- most pictures at cafes, for example, only focus on food.

User Map

Three maps were created to give ideas of how our user, Nina, gets to arrive at a preferred workplace. Considering how visual our users are, with many wanting to see the location itself and looking at maps to consider distance, I selected the second map (indicated by green star).

Upon deciding the route users will use to achieve their goals, the first day of my design sprint was finished. It was time to use this information.

A series of “journeys” a user could theoretically take, from point A to point B. Nina’s goal is to arrive at a work space.

Sprint Day 2 - Sketching

It was time to figure out what solutions might have been used to address this problem. Post Up seems to be unique-- I have not personally been able to find applications that serve remote workers finding work spaces nearby, but users mentioned using different applications such as Yelp to figure out how to find a nearby workplace.

As part of competitor research, I began with Lightning Demos to examine potential solutions to the user’s needs. I included apps that our interviewees found helpful in their search.

Lightning Demo 1 - Yelp

Lightning Demo 2 - Foursquare

The first app I decided to look at was Yelp, since it was mentioned frequently in interviews as a tool remote workers liked to use. Yelp is useful at finding places nearby and providing reviews, a list of amenities, and a map that shows where places are relative to the user. A sort feature by distance and other parameters seems useful.

Lightning Demo 3 - Open Table

Foursquare is more geared towards navigating a city and providing places in general to go to, much like Yelp. I like the style and lay-out of the screens, the lists of places of interests, and the map. Unlike Yelp’s map, Foursquare has a map that indicates ratings and has more features in figuring out where to find relevant places, such as manually drawing an area in where to search.

Sketch 1 - Crazy 8s

Open Table is an application geared more towards making reservations specifically for up-scaled restaurants, but also seems to be more attentive to details. Photos are divided into albums, amenities also include features such as accessibility, dress code, and parking, and notes from the restaurant are present. Booking may also be a feature to look into, or some way of learning how busy things might be like in Google Map’s “busy” times.

Sketch 2 - Solution Sketch

Multiple approaches were used, such as a carousel of relevant places, a “draw area” button, some buttons to sort by distance, a vertical navigation menu, and more. I also tried a couple of ideas on whether I would like the rating to be present on the markers or the order of distance.

The critical screen, the map itself, should retain the ability to change filters as necessary. Current location will be default with the user able to put in addresses. However, the user can also move the map around, reposition a starting point, or even draw an area where they want to search.

A carousel of relevant places will be at the bottom with an expandable window, showing most relevant first. Default will be closest by distance.

The Crazy 8s. Taking influence from the above Lightning Demos, these sketches were made.

The Solution Sketch. The critical screen, shown in the middle, is sandwiched between the previous screen and the following screen.

Sprint Day 3 - Deciding

I was pretty happy with the previous day’s sketches, and after reviewing the Crazy 8s and the Solution Sketch again, I decided to run with the solution sketch and create the relevant storyboard. This storyboard will demonstrate a user journey where the person wants to find a nearby workplace that meets their needs, and to successfully travel to their desired destination.

The eleven screens necessary for the design of the MVP.

The storyboard sits at about 11 screens, where the user first opens the app and hits the search button (the search criteria will default to current location). The app then will show a map with possible destinations and a carousel of each location in order of proximity. The user clicks on a location marker, which will center the destination and show a summary of the location.

Clicking it brings the user to the location’s homepage where they can browse relevant info. If satisfied, they can hit the “Directions” floating button, and it will open Google Maps and get them to their destination. Upon closing, an animated screen confirms they reached the destination, and asks them to review. If the user says no, it takes them back to the dashboard.

Sprint Day 4 - Prototyping

It’s time to finally create the prototype. I decided to keep things as simple as possible– the program I’m most familiar with for creating short prototypes is Figma, so I created the relevant screens and simple animations and paths to go with them.

I wanted to give Post Up a professional, yet simple look. The accent secondary color is based off the original Post Up brand color, but subdued to be less straining on the eyes. I liked the simplicity of Open Table’s theme and kept to something similar, with rounded edges.

Critical Screen

As for the critical screen, I want users to have the option to rescan for nearby areas if they have moved around. I would also like users to have the option of moving the “target” area elsewhere on the map, as well as drawing a perimeter of where to look. Directions and filters can be adjusted in the search bar as well.

The yellow directions button floats and allows the user to immediately get directions, but at the same time the user can read more if they’d like to regarding a specific location.

Sprint Day 5 - Testing

Five participants were found through various methods, such as Discord chat servers, the Springboard Slack community, and survey sites such as SurveySwap.io. I conducted interviews with my five participants through Zoom, where I obtained consent for video, screenshare, and recording.

Affinity Mapping

Results

4 out of 5 participants mentioned the yellow directions button, either that it wasn’t intuitive or that it wasn’t clear what hitting the button would do. Even the user that said they knew what it did showed some hesitation.

The best solution appears to be remaking this button to say “Get Directions”, and make the button a little larger.

3 out of 5 participants expressed confusion over what the buttons at the top of the map were, with an additional two people exclaiming that the map was cluttered. Rescan, Target, and Draw Area had to be explained to them.

It may be easier to change “rescan” to “refresh”, and simply load the areas as the user scrolls. Also, filtering the Google Maps indicators is worth looking into, only showing relevant UI instead of all markers.

2 out of 5 users were confused as to whether the search bar was a button or a search option. Moreover, 3 out of 5 users’ first instinct was to go to the Nearby Places function rather than the search bar out of the gate. I could consider small things such as removing the shadow on the search bar, and perhaps prioritizing the Nearby Places carousel by moving it up.