Helpkin is the app for parents to trade babysitting duties with people they trust. The current design was researched through user testing and feedback applied to determine which areas of the app to focus on in this first round of redesigns.
Client: Helpkin
Platform: iOs and Android
Deliverables: User research artifacts, defining and prioritizing features, sketches, high fidelity mockups, and a mobile prototype.
Challenge: How do we redesign an app to instill enough trust to give parents peace of mind when searching for childcare?
Solution: Give users the flexibility to expand childcare network or stay within trusted network(s), display history of user's activity and mutual connections between parents/guardians on profile screens, help users easily connect with each other to validate activity, create softer visuals, give clear call to actions, and utilize footer navigation to include all necessary features.
Scenario:
Consider persona Donna: a single parent who just moved to LA with her kids.
She’s hunting through job listings, nailing interviews, continuing down the path to getting those offers when all of a sudden - her awesomeness is limited when she has multiple round 2 interviews on back to back days.
That’d be a pretty penny through popular care sites and isn’t exactly in Donna’s budget at the moment.
She has time to spare while spending it with her kids; if only that were something she could barter in exchange for a time her loved ones need supervision.
Well, it is and totally can happen through the app, Helpkin.
Search filters:
She's just downloaded the Hepkin app and views her feed of registered users. Donna decides to take a look at her filter options.
Registering users:
Donna remembers Adam Hogan and decides to look him up since their kids are in the same class. She isn’t able to see the mutual connections between her and Adam until she signs up for the app. Hitting the trust request icon will prompt non-subscribers to a sign-up page.
Pending approvals:
She decides to sign up with Facebook to get access to mutual connections between her and other users. A connection verification will prompt before her request sends. Once she verifies and the trust request is accepted from Adam, the alert icon will change from an hourglass to a check mark.
Profile details:
Donna is able to see more details of Adam, his accommodations, his children’s information, a ‘view all’ feature of subscribers he’s received helped from and assisted for. She sees he’s helped Delia a couple of times in the past month and decides to message her for more details on her child’s experience with Adam.
Initiate request:
After successful feedback from Delia, she exchanges messages with Adam to confirm his friendliness before sending him a Helpkin request. She’s able to select one or more users when sending a request, along with individually selecting her child/children in need of supervision.
Messaging screen:
A profile picture bubble was added to the 2nd party, to give a more personable feel to whom the user was exchanging messages with. The sharp corners of the chat bubble and its pinch were rounded out to keep consistent with the soft, circular feel throughout the app. In the message field, the 'send' button was changed from a solid filled pink with white text to a hollowed white square with rounded edges, pink borders and font, that only appears once text enters the field, to give the screen a cleaner look & feel. The size of the message bubbles were decreased to hone in closer to the text in order to save on screen real estate and keep a tighter & light appearance. A hollow appearance was to added the header to quickly remind the users of the previous messages exchanged.
Inbox view:
She’ll select “next”, fill in details, and send her Helpkin request. In her inbox, the unseen request will appear with a pink dot next to the receiver’s name.
Response indicator:
Once Adam accepts Donna’s Helpkin request, the bubble’s filled to hollowed appearance will indicate a response.
Pending vs. completed:
Originally, pending approval and accepted request bubbles were solid with vivid pink. It was difficult to differentiate between pending and accepted. Requests pending approval were kept filled, the completed requests bubbles were hollowed out.
Edit profile:
Donna decides to check out her edit profile options. Notice she can control her profile’s privacy settings along with the visibility of her children’s photos and information to the public. She decides to back out of the screen and is prompted before leaving her unsaved changes.
To continue with redesign talking points: the size of the user’s profile picture was condensed and a camera icon was added to the bottom corner of the user & child profile picture, to utilize screen space. An activity tracker below the profile picture indicates how active users are with giving and receiving help. Children's special needs and dietary restrictions are now available to edit, through the redesign.
Hamburger menu:
She’s curious what drawer of goodies this hamburger menu will offer & decides to take a peak. Since she synced her personal calendar to the app, she’ll find the days she’s unavailable to help are already blocked out - signaling her immediately without having to close the app.
One of the biggest advantages of the hamburger menu is that it can help clean up your home page especially on mobile devices where there is limited amount of space to work with. Certain features needed to be included without creating chaos - this was a simple way to implement the necessary features & consolidate the settings section.