Mobile scheduling enhancements
Challenge
Improve job scheduling in the Jobber mobile app in order to boost activation and reduce churn.
Outcome
Introduced a “Find a time” feature to surface team availability during Job creation which led to a 5% lift in number of jobs scheduled for in-trial users.
Company
Jobber
Role
Determine overall design direction
Heavily contribute to design research
Timeline
4 weeks (2 sprints)
A little context
Jobber is a SaaS-based product that helps Service Providers (SPs) such as plumbers, landscapers, and cleaners run their operations so that they can better manage their business and provide a professional experience for their customers, also known as Service Consumers (SCs).
Within the product, "jobs" represent the work an SP is going to perform and they're a crucial part of the Jobber workflow. Jobs can be scheduled on a calendar and being able to do so easily from the mobile app is one of the most important factors for new trial users who are considering subscribing.
The challenge
Our team's challenge was to improve job scheduling in the mobile app in order to boost activation and reduce churn.
Need more context?
You can check out Jobber here!
The team
The Scrum team for this project was comprised of four Software Developers, a Product Manager, a Scrum Master, and a Product Designer — played by me.
Collecting knowledge
In order to improve on the mobile scheduling experience, we first needed to understand how SPs were making scheduling decisions for their businesses.
To gain a quick, high-level understanding of SPs scheduling workflows, I talked to a few of Jobber's Product Coaches — aka Jobber's resident SP experts.
From there, our team's Product Manager and I performed in-depth interviews with ~10 SPs including 3 ride-alongs with local business owners and Jobber users. These interviews were focused on understanding scheduling decisions and how SPs were using Jobber to actually schedule their work.
Methods
In-depth interviews / Contextual interviews
Analyzing the data
I collected raw interview data in Figma and began grouping themes to create an affinity diagram. This led to the formation of a few key insights.
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There are a lot of factors that go into scheduling. Team availability, location of scheduled jobs, length of jobs, and many more factors all play a role.
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Almost all SPs need to qualify an SC and collect their information before scheduling a job. Qualifying SCs involves knowing who the client is, where they live, what work they need done, and how urgently do they need the work to be completed.
At first glance, the Jobber app seemed to already be handling those insights fairly well. The main calendar page showed team availability, location of scheduled jobs, length of jobs, and more. And the job creation page provided a place for SPs to collect SC information as they were being qualified.
Methods
Affinity diagram
Identifying the gap
Even though the app had the right information, we weren't surfacing it at the right time! The scheduling workflow was making it impossible for SPs to collect SC information and view their business’s schedule at the same time. This led to disjointed experiences and cumbersome workarounds in order to make scheduling decisions in the app.
Although obvious in hindsight, this breakthrough was genuinely exciting because we were able to unearth a significant gap in Jobber’s core workflow by conducting a relatively small number of customer interviews and ride-alongs. User research for the win!
Workarounds
One SP we spoke to went as far as using a second phone in order to see her schedule while creating a job.
How might we enable SPs to see their schedule at the same time as they’re collected client and work details?
Surfacing availability
I began exploring solutions to this problem by conducting some competitive analysis of other scheduling apps to see how this type of problem was being handled in other contexts.
I also began discussions with developers because I saw potential for repurposing some existing calendar views and needed a better understanding of the technical effort required to do so.
From the competitive analysis and developer discussions, I started pursuing an idea to add a "Find a Time" feature which would leverage an existing calendar view to surface team availability to the SP from the job create page.
I shared rough hand sketches of the flow with the Jobber product design team for review before tightening up the UI and creating higher fidelity mockups and a prototype in Figma.
The final designs were handed off the the development team who were able to implement the solution in a single, two week sprint.
Methods
Competitive analysis / Sketching / Prototyping
Design reviews
At Jobber, the product design team, which is comprised of designers from all of the scrum teams, sets aside time twice a week to critique and review each other's work.
I really enjoy these review sessions because they offer so many opportunities to learn from peers and to provide mentorship where possible.
Plus, when there isn't anything to review, it provides a great space to laugh, bond as a team, and do weird things only designers find fun ;)
Find a Time button added above scheduling inputs
Tapping opens a modified team view
Tapping an open slot selects it
Team member, times, and dates are auto-filled on job creation page
Impact
We saw a 5% lift of jobs being created by new-trial users in the mobile app after Find a Time was introduced.
Beyond the immediate impact to the product, one of the aspects of this work that I'm most proud of is the fact that my mobile scheduling research is still being referenced by teams at Jobber. It’s even been used as the basis for an empathy-building, role playing exercise that product teams participated in.
lift in our leading metric
5%
Learnings
I really enjoyed this project because it taught me a lot about being patient and allowing myself to work through the ambiguous and at times frustrating process of identifying the root cause of these SPs scheduling pains. Unraveling all of the raw data we had acquired and piecing it back together into really useful insights was a difficult process but one that was incredibly rewarding when we finally had our breakthrough.
Thank you
I wanted to acknowledge Ben(ji) Franck for providing me with mentorship while I navigated through the ambiguity of user research. In a moment of frustration when trying to group seemingly unrelated data points, Benji reminded me that this work is hard at times and that's kind of the point. As designers, we need to be comfortable with uncertainty because the only way out is through.
Thank you for the support and advice — I haven't forgotten it.