Business Requirements:

‘Maintenance’ is a desktop app created by Uptick to help Property Managers be on top of building maintenance and requirements, while also outsourcing and managing maintenance works. Uptick wanted to ensure users needs from their product offering were being met.

My Responsibilities:

I needed to uncover their user needs and discover where the gaps were in their product, and find solutions to the problem areas that we uncovered.

My Approach:

Step 1 of 5 – Attending a Workshop:

While attending a training session with one of Uptick’s core clients and observing where in the product they were finding relevant issues, I uncovered several needs that were not addressed in the current product.

Step 2 of 5 – Categorising information:

The initial step was to sort through all the information provided by the client, and categorise each concern area into priority areas and identify what was worth fixing, what would be an easy fix, what could be fixed to make the product as a whole easier, and main points to consider when designing.

Step 3 of 5 – Affinity Mapping:

After sifting through the information, It was evident there were common areas that could be grouped by creating an affinity map, to help look at key areas to target and who in the business they would benefit.

Step 4 of 5 – Personas:

From discovering the client’s needs and sifting through the information provided, personas were then developed based off characteristics that encompassed their two main types of users.

Step 5 of 5 – User Journey:

It was then easy to decipher the relationships between different users of the app to create an ideal user journey, of how each user and their tasks in the app relate in an easy and efficient way.

Impact:

The main gap I found after sorting through the research was that there was a missing user in the mix that the product did not consider, which was a contractor’s manager. Adding this user to the process and user journey aided in willingness from users to use this product significantly, along with the ease of the product improving after a clear user journey throughout the product was identified.