ENCASA
Manage your home renovation projects all in one place.
User Research
UX / UI
Design System
Background
Home renovation has always been a complicated troublesome experience. No matter if you're a first time buyer or have done renovations before, homeowners always struggle to find and build trust with contractors.
The goal of this project is to connect these two parties. We want to bring transparency and clarity throughout the whole process to help homeowners make the home renovation process easier and more engaging.
Project Timeline
March 2022 - June 2022
(3 months)
Project Type
App Design
Tools
Figma
Illustrator
Photoshop
INITIAL PROBLEM DISCOVERY
As a first time homeowner, I’ve experienced a lot of unforeseen issues and have been struggling with the whole process. I asked around my friends, and it seems they’ve had similar pains. This sparked the question - how can we make this renovation process easier?
WHITE PAPER RESEARCH
Starting from white paper research, I aimed to look at a larger audience group to see if this is a problem worth looking into. The article on Los Angeles Times titled Remodeling your home is more stressful than it appears on HGTV pointed out:
“…These stressors begin with choosing a contractor, architect and consultants, such as home designers and engineers, for help in making the many decisions regarding the scope, feasibility and details of the project…”
Our Goals
Make home renovation process easier and more pleasant.
We want to keep the excitement for homeowners when they think of a dream home, instead of getting exhausted by the complexity and uncertainty.
Give homeowners more control over their time and money.
A lot of the times, homeowners don't have enough knowledge about home renovation and feel they're blindsided. We want to be able to educate them and help them feel confident.
Facilitate interaction between homeowners and contractors.
Communication is the always the key between two parties. We want to provide the option of being able to communicate easier.
REFRAME THE QUESTION
Why is it hard to build trust between homeowners and contractors?
I did some research and analysis to further understand the problem. I did competitive analysis, conducted user interviews, and did more white paper research to understand user needs, behaviors and pain‐points.
Understanding the Landscape
With the information gathered, I started to look at exiting products that are trying to solve the SAME problem - to bridge homeowners and contractors.
I looked at 4 popular Apps among homeowners and found all of them are focusing on before & after renovation, which are the matching process and the customer review session. Almost NONE of them focused on the actual DURING renovation process. This could potentially be the starting point of this project.
I then started to think about why people want to use this app, mostly why contractors want to use it? What can we bring to contractors as a business strategy? How can they benefit from this? How can we sell the product? These questions helped form the research and design strategy, what needed to be considered, and eventually the decision making on key feature elements of this MVP project.
Gathering insights from Interviews
With this hypothesis in mind, I did a screener survey to narrow down the target user of the product: first time buyers and young professionals who don’t have much experience in renovation. Afterwards, I conducted 5 in-depth interviews to get a better understanding of the needs and pains, and then created the affinity diagram to organize the information gathered.
4 Major Problems:
QUALITY - Homeowners find it difficult to find a trustworthy contractor, there’s no reliability to prove the work quality.
MONEY - Pricing between contractors are drastically different, and there might be a lot of additional unforeseen cost during renovation.
TIME - Users were not sure how long the work will take even the contractor gave them a brief estimate, and they're worried the project cannot be finished on time.
COMMUNICATION - Users need to frequently contact the contractor to check the progress.
Key Insights:
There's a lack of standards for the cost of home renovations due to the complexity of factors including quality and timeframe of the work.
Due to the material and labor shortage, the timeline became unpredictable when you started the construction process.
Meet Karla
I created Karla base on the information gathered, and referred to the persona as a guideline throughout the design process.
User Journey
I then mapped out the different phases throughout a renovation project to better immerse myself with the user mental model, to understand the highs and lows, and to see where I needed to focus on to help with the overall user experience.
Looking at the emotion chart, how we can help make the renovation process easier are focusing on the two down points:
Before Renovation - the matching process between contractors and homeowners
During Renovation - communication and better management
The solution then became clear - a project management tool for home renovation.
THE PROCESS
Define Key Features
A relationship is a two way street
To better understand the gap between homeowners and contractors, thinking from the contractor's perspective is equally essential. With the understanding of the pain points from homeowners, I did some white paper research on contractors' pain points.
Building trust through transparency
I then map out the needs from both homeowners and contractors to find similarities and differences, and to determine KEY FEATURES that take less effort but make a bigger impact.
The structure and the flow
I created the information architecture (IA) of the app based on the features I decided to include, to help sort out the hierarchy and organize the information.
The user flow outlined the detailed route of how users will navigate through different features, and helped give me a rough idea of the screens I would need to create wireframes.
Setting the design direction
Design - Test - Iterate
Starting from sketches and paper prototypes, I was able to communicate my ideas easily, test more effectively and make iterations. I then created low-fidelity wireframes for each flow of the app.
4 Major Design Changes
Re-organize information to put what users wanted to know up on top
Match level of detail on all sections
Modify visual hierarchy
1
Homepage Visual Hierarchy
Take out the calendar since it’s hard to understand, and only 1 out of the 5 users actually clicked on the calendar
Change detailed steps from a new page to an expanded view.
Progress View Optimization
2
Not much interaction was needed on each update
Users wanted to see more tasks done in a broadcast feed
Update Page to List View
3
Add onboarding pages after signing in to give an overview of what the app can do
Add Onboarding Experience
4
The Style Guide
Color Palette
Blue is used as the primary color to represent reliability and clarity since it's a project management tool. I then chose accent color and gray tones that match the primary blue color.
Typography
I tried to minimize the number of font styles to establish a clear font hierarchy. Sans-serif fonts are used to give a minimal and clean look to match the idea of clarity.
Components
A Management Tool for Your Home Renovation Project
THE SOLUTION
Project Dashboard
The homepage of the app is your project dashboard. Based on the research, we showcased the most recent updates, overall progress, user's task list and project budget since these are the most essential information homeowners are looking for.
Detailed schedule and updates
A schedule breakdown gives you an idea of the entire process. You will be able to better understand the steps needed for a remodel, and to keep track on what's been done, what's happening now, and what's the next step. Photos were uploaded by the contractor on a task base so that when you’re too busy to go on site and check, you will be able to visualize the progress.
Keep track of your spendings
Encasa budget tool allows people to keep track of their spendings. It also shows the amount they committed to but haven’t pay yet, so that the users can plan accordingly.
To do list as a reminder
Whether it’s something you need to purchase or it’s a job review request from the contractor, your tasks are organized by priority so that you won't miss it and cause delay on your part.
Takeaways
Think Outside the Box
Usually our first reaction is always to look at how existing products are trying to solve the problem, and create a better version of that. However, dig deeper into the root of the problem, you might come up with a completely different solution.