CONTRACTOR PRO
A Case Study In Adding Features
Overview
This project showcases the process of UX design for new product features within a budget. I worked with a research team to help Logicel Solutions LLC discover opportunity areas and prototype new functionality for their product Contractor Pro.
Methods
Remote Survey
User Journey Map
Rapid Prototyping
Tech-Scoping
Figma Wireframing
Kano Analysis
Role
UX Researcher
Product Designer
Data Analyst
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Google Suite
What is Contractor Pro?
Contractor Pro is a tool for managing contract work. Often blue-collar in nature, this type of business can span many different professions. Contractor Pro aims to help these businesses by acting as a central hub for communication and data organization.
Who Are The Users?
The primary user group of Contractor Pro is contract business owners. These individuals own their businesses and hire “sub-contractors” to perform jobs as they arise.
A secondary user group consists of sub-contractors. These are laborers who agree to complete jobs given to them by the business owners
Where We’re Going
My client asked me to provide a slide deck with high fidelity, annotated wireframes indicating my design proposals and providing research-based rationale to guide the company’s decision-making process going forward. And so, I set out on a journey to find out what designs would be most meaningful to the company’s end user. Here are some techniques I utilized along the way:
Stakeholder Interviews
Research Data Analysis
Rapid Prototyping
Tech Scoping With Developers
Remote Surveys
Kano Analysis
Figma Prototyping
Fostering Connection
During this project, I had the privilege of working closely with the creator of Logicel Solutions and the founder of Contractor Pro. I began my journey by conducting an extensive stakeholder interview, getting to know my client and his product. My purpose during this time was not merely to gain an understanding of the product functionality but to gain a deeper perspective into the “why” behind it. What drove the creation of Contractor Pro? What makes it meaningful to the users and what ideas do the stakeholders have about where the product could go next?
What I discovered in my stakeholder interview was an incredible story. Contractor Pro was founded by a contractor-turned-business owner. The product was created for people like him who run small businesses and need a dedicated tool to organize their day-to-day operations.
Research: The Foundations
Taking the knowledge I gained in my stakeholder interview, I turned to the research data collected by the company prior. This research showed that users of the application are overwhelmingly small contract business owners looking for help with fielding, organizing, and completing jobs while facilitating communication with customers and sub-contractors.
What Is Meaningful?
From the research, I distilled findings into key insights, relevant to the application’s current status and forward momentum for the company. Relevant findings included things like the fact that users need the application to be mobile-optimized for their busy schedules and that users consistently use three or more separate tools/applications to store job data, manage schedules, communicate with customers, and archive financial records.
User Goals
Users of Contractor Pro are on a mission to provide valuable work to customers in a timely and organized manner. They want to run their businesses as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
Goals
To fully understand this job I needed to fully understand my client and their goals. Not only that, I needed to develop a deep understanding of the product’s end user and get to know their needs on a day-to-day basis. After speaking with the client and analyzing the research data, I came up with the following succinct goal statements for both groups.
Client Goals
Contractor Pro wants to streamline the workflow of busy and overwhelmed business owners. They strive to alleviate the incredible logistical burdens these types of businesses entail with an intuitive and flexible digital product.
Research Highlight: User Journey Maps
In synthesizing my research data I created a hypothetical user journey map, demonstrating the experience a typical user might have while interfacing with the product. This allowed my team and I to visualize the current state of the application and pinpoint opportunity areas to focus our attention on during the next stage of the process.
Click on this image to enlarge it!
What Can We Build?
With a clear view of our product and the goals of our users, my team and I cast a wide net of rapid prototypes. These low-fidelity sketch cards served as an array of potential ideas to present to the Contractor Pro back-end development team.
What Can We Afford? (Tech Budget)
To determine what designs would be viable to execute, my team and I conducted a tech-scoping budget analysis with the back-end development team at Contractor Pro. In this meeting we had the developers score each rapid design prototype on a scale to determine the time/effort estimated to create each new feature.
Decisions, Decisions…
After tech-scoping the design ideas, I set about to determine which ones would be most effective at realizing the client and user goals while remaining within a realistic development frame. To help with this decision I sent out a questionnaire with a list of top prototype ideas to nine users of the app in the form of a remote survey. With the results of this survey, my team and I performed the Kano Analysis method, a technique used to determine the necessity and desirability of product features amongst users.
Making It Happen (figma Prototype)
Once I had made my final design concept selections I sat down in Figma to flesh out thoughtful, high-fidelity wireframes of my designs.
Bringing It All Together
Please check out my final deliverable on this project! This report entails an even more in-depth look at the methodologies I used and the results of my research analysis. Here you can see my full arsenal of annotated wireframe designs and a breakdown of the project’s tech budget.
What Did We Learn? (Conclusion)
I felt truly honored to be a part of such a wonderful project. Contractor Pro is a fantastic company with a big heart for its target users. This process taught me a lot about what it takes to run a business not only from the perspective of our users but also in having the opportunity to work in tandem with a startup at this crucial stage in the development process of their product.
