THE PROBLEM

FloraGoGo hopes that their position as a mobile-first startup will allow them to differentiate themselves, since many of their competitors focus on the desktop experience. By creating a beautiful in-app experience similar to that of services like Postmates and Uber, they hope to continue to scale quickly and expand into new cities by the end of the year. They believe the biggest room for growth comes from focusing on these areas of the app experience: 

● The customer app experience: By making the process of selecting delivery location, delivery time, and product seamless and intuitive, they think users will choose them over the competition.

● The florist app experience: By creating an incredibly simple and pleasant app experience for the florists, from initial signup to receiving notifications about new eligible orders to the process of claiming, prepping, delivering, and being paid for orders, they’ll be able to convince florists in their operating cities to choose to use them instead of larger, clunkier competitors.

MY ROLE 

Using design principles of User Research, Interaction and Interface Design, Wireframing and Prototyping, and Iteration, to create high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes of the following sections of the mobile app: 

● CUSTOMER SIGN IN: Users must be able to sign up quickly via Google or Facebook authorization.

● FLORIST SIGN IN: Florists must be able to sign up for their account within 2 screens and then receive information via a 3rd screen about the approval process (a salesperson from FloraGoGo will call them within 24 hours to review their application).

● CUSTOMER SEARCH: Users must be able to search and filter products by price, style (bouquets, vases, other arrangements), flower type, and color. 

● TRACKER: Incorporate some form of “order status” tracker for users to see where their order is in the delivery process (Received, Preparation, Delivery, Delivered). There should be a corresponding design for the florists where they update this status tracker as well. 

THE APPROACH

Market & consumer research 

The first element was to figure out who my customer was by using a design Sprint process and making design choices based on user research. 

The preliminary research and competitive analysis was used to figure out who the typical users are for a flower delivery service. Who normally buys flowers? What type of service does the customer want to order again? What does the supplier need in order to stay competitive with other services?

OfferUp and Letgo, these are other businesses in the app-based delivery market that are two-sided marketplaces. I found that their product Search and Product Detail page, as well as their Notifications page were very helpful to incorporate into my own design. Through the Notifications page, on OfferUp, there are actual interactions between the customer and supplier. This interaction makes the customer feel more comfortable buying the sellers product which in turn allows the customer to come back for more items and retain the customer and supplier through the in-app experience.

USER FLOW

Using a Customer Map and an Impact Scale, I tried to problem solve a design flow for the customer and florist with initial signup through to checkout.

Should the signup flow be a simple modal on one page or is it a multi-step process that requires you to capture more information than name and email?

INITIAL SIGN UP SCREENS

Through iterations of a sign up screen I tried to figure out what would be easy with a few amount of clicks. This is still a learning process for me thinking about the in-app experience for customers as well as the supplier side. 

● Customer and Florist Signup: Users can quickly create an account in just 1 or 2 clicks, and then select their delivery location and time instantly. They can also use Facebook and Google to signup at this step.

INITIAL WIREFRAME PROTOTYPE

Where do you begin? I figured that by breaking each section down made it easier to think about the user interactions within the app.

Questions and thoughts for the Customer experience.

ORDER CHECKOUT: What screens do you need to design to ensure that a user can quickly set their delivery time and location, find the product they want, and effortlessly check out. 

PRODUCT SEARCH: What happens once they have completed their order? What does the confirmation page look like? 

TRACKER: What does a customer need to be able to edit in their Settings? What type of screen should they have for Active vs Completed orders and what information should they be able to see about their orders on each screen? 

Questions and thoughts for the Florist experience.

SIGN IN: Once a Florist signs up, what screens do they need to complete in order to be fully onboarded into the app. How will they select what items they have in stock? Do they need to update this every day? Should they receive a push notification each day that reminds them to update their inventory? Do they have a florist profile page that customers can see? What information is present on that screen? 

TRACKER: What does it look like for a Florist when a new order comes in? What information should be present in order for them to decide whether to claim it or not. Once it’s claimed by them, what happens? Do they have a dashboard with all of their active orders? If so, what information should be present on this dashboard page and what information should be available if they click into each order? Finally, what does that “Order Status” tracker look like and how does a florist update the status of the order?

REFLECTIONS

It was challenging learning how to design a two-sided marketplace: Being able to design for the supplier and end-user.

Figuring out how to design an app with multiple levels of filtering and searching. 

I am still trying to resolve how a florist can keep track of their orders. It’s probably fairly simple to many of you who handle these projects all the time but for me, it is a learning process.