Improving the Mobile Experience of an
All-In-One Business Software
Myself, a project manager, and COO worked together to create the redesign Lawn Buddy's mobile experience, prioritizing the most impactful changes while requiring the least amount of development resources.
Sector
Saas
Project
Mobile App
Client
Lawn Buddy
Role
Lead UX/UI and Researcher
Timeline
Aug 2023 - Nov 2023
01
Context & Discovery
Overview
Lawn Buddy’s all-in-one business software provides a key product for professionals in the lawn and landscaping industry. Their mobile application streamlines customer management, job scheduling, electronic invoicing, client communication, route optimization, and exists to help small businesses thrive.
Still, their mobile app suffered from some common problems - lack of attention to core features, complexity, clutter, and poor navigation. Users reported difficulty in completing their main objectives on a daily basis.
Team
Stepping in as the Lead UX designer in August 2023 alongside Lawn Buddy’s project manager and COO, a research project began to discover and define underlying usability problems.
Objective
To build a comprehensive understanding our user’s key behaviors in order to optimize Lawn Buddy’s mobile home screen, and create a foundation for future mobile redesign work.
02
Research
Approach
I began this engagement with strategy & alignment sessions with all involved stakeholders to better understand the goals and desires and create a sense of shared clarity around the project.
A few of our Miro boards used during our Strategy & Alignment
Generative Research
We then conducted a qualitative study and assessment of our existing product which consisted of:
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Interviews
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Assessment of secondary research reports
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Site visits / Ethnographic research
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Assessment of feedback given to customer support & sales
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Reviews from app store, Facebook, Linkedin, and direct email
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Competitive analysis / Market research
My aim was to understand our provider's current usage of the current mobile app, key daily objectives, major pain points, amongst other goals. I managed the end-to-end research process and data collection, which included 27 in-depth interviews and over 100 pieces of written feedback.
Lawn Buddy's slogan: "Software designed for big sweaty thumbs"
Analysis
I then used a rainbow spreadsheet to turn qualitative data into quantitative data. With our research goal in mind, I pulled 20 important findings and 4 guiding design principles to help guide eventual design work.
03
Design
Design Sprints
The design phase included brainstorming, sketching ideas, making wireframes, collecting internal feedback.
Visualization of the iterative process
Collaboration with the Development Team
Prototyping and Validation
I performed over 12 user interviews and usability tests with Lawn Buddy’s providers to ensure the design and overall strategic product direction was meeting user needs and increasing value.
I utilized Jakob Neilson's usability heuristics to ensure that all designs tested highly in learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors and satisfaction, amongst other goals.
During the design phase, we were presented the opportunity to rethink many of our processes as a team. The main challenge we faced was was limited design resources and time constraints. Overcoming these challenges to deliver impactful change required active communication and regular feedback when assessing the scope of development work load. This effort successfully resulted in a collaborative roadmap that enhanced the team’s efficiency and scalability for future design changes.
Some in-person usability tests were conducted at industry trade shows
04
Outcomes
Implementation
Using Mixpanel, I was able to measure key actions of our users. After design changes were released, those key actions were re-measured to assess the impact of individual design changes.
In addition, I gathered feedback both directly from providers and via customer support and sales channels to assess the impact that was made. Iterations were made and released to support additional needs.
Outcomes
Lawn Buddy's new home screen released successfully, and after months of development and design work, over 17 impactful design released. These changes resulted in the following outcomes and more:
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Mobile subscription upgrades increased by 58%
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Task completion rate for completing a job increased by 72%
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Mobile dropout rate decreased by 45%
Lawn Buddy's previous home screen compared to the new design