MYLO: Valet Movers
Challenge
Local pre-revenue startup Mylo is innovating on the existing moving and storage model. Using their app, Mylo’s goal is to advance the consumers’ role and afford them greater transparency into the overall service delivery model process. Mylo tasked me and my team with evaluating how well their app performs for consumers, and to identify opportunities to improve its functionality and usability.
Solution
An interactive prototype provided to stakeholders, incorporating incremental yet impactful additions to the user flow. Applying insights from testing, this solution applies focused improvements to wayfinding, navigation, and modifies the interface language to facilitate a more intuitive and guided experience for new Mylo consumers.
Methodology
Cognitive Walkthrough
Contextual Inquiry
Affinity Diagramming
Hand-sketch wireframing
Sketch & Invision prototyping
The Client
Get to Know MYLO
The current process for renting storage is not accessible or intuitive to consumers, as it (1) relies heavily on industry knowledge to find the right storage solution as well as (2) puts most responsibility for documenting items before and after pickup (any damages? fragile items? etc.) solely on movers, who mostly use their own analogue methods to record the data. This creates a problem for consumers: they lack visibility as to the status of their items when picked up and while in storage, leaving them to remember (using their own manual methods) what they put in storage and what state it was in when it left their home.
Mylo is a full-service storage and delivery solution that intends to set itself apart from the pack by advancing the consumers’ role in the service delivery model and increasing the level of transparency across the process. Mylo pulls back the curtain by helping consumers identify what type of storage is needed, selecting options for pickup, and documenting the status of their items. Once stored, consumers can access their own inventories and quickly request that any of their items be delivered.
RESEARCHING THE PROBLEM SPACE
First, I wanted to familiarize myself with Mylo’s process. I jumped into the app and spent the evening exploring and conducting a cognitive walkthrough of the primary tasks for consumers and service providers. For each action within a task, I applied the following questions:
1. Will the user try to achieve the right outcome? (Mental model)
2. Is the correct action visible? (Visibility/Hierarchy)
3. Is there a clear connection between the control and the resulting action (Mapping/Consistency)
4. Is there sufficient and/or appropriate feedback? (Feedback)
Armed with a much more robust understanding of the app and its potential pain points, my team regrouped the next day and conducted a contextual inquiry. Mylo’s pre-revenue status meant that their current app was a prototype, so our interviews with experienced consumers and service providers required more intentional framing since they hadn’t interacted with it before.
Due to the newly-enacted quarantine in Minnesota, we also knew that in-person sessions would not be safe for participants or our moderators at this time. It was time to get creative! We flexed our remote testing muscles and conducted our interviews digitally, using a variety of tools to ensure that we effectively maintained the integrity of our research. Participants were first asked if they would consent to screensharing and recording on their cell phones (as they navigated the app), as well as turning their laptop cameras. During each interview, the moderator conducted the sessions on-camera, while the rest of the team carefully observed and took notes with their audio and cameras off.
Research Goals:
Gain insights around the perceived and actual usability of primary tasks for both the service provider and the client.
Gain an understanding of how the product fits into the user’s context. Does it solve problems for them or create new ones?
Discover ways that the Mylo App matches user’s expectations and identify opportunities for refinement.
Better understand the desirability of the system, process, and app involvement compared to other (or no) services.
Fresh off of these completed interviews, my team immediately started inputting and coding the information into a Trello board. I started affinity diagramming the mountain of digital notes into different pain points, themes, unique insights, etc.
Triangulating Mylo’s goals, discoveries from the cognitive walkthrough, and these contextual inquiry notes helped determine where users were experiencing the most difficulty, surfacing the following themes:
Lack of navigation and consistent and visible feedback for users as they progress through tasks. Consumers expressed confusion as to where they needed to go next, whether they were on the right track, how to get to a particular screen, etc.
A need for more frequency, clarity, and detail of wayfinding elements, along with more intuitive interface language and icons that better matched consumers’ existing mental models for moving/storage. Researched showed that consumers struggled with feeling “lost” and wanting more guidance from the app.
TAKING IT DIGITAL
With these themes as my north star, I hand-sketched various wireframes before digitizing the most impactful designs in Sketch, converting these high-level research findings into clear actionable opportunities for improving functionality and usability for Mylo’s consumers.
Creating medium-fidelity wireframes in Sketch
BRINGING THE WIREFRAMES TO LIFE
I created an interactive prototype in Invision for Mylo stakeholders, recommending seven targeted areas for improvement.
Clip of interactive prototype: placing an order
Clip of interactive prototype: tutorial modal
THE IMPROVEMENTS
1. Added a MYLO logo at the top of each screen, acting as an "escape hatch" to get back to Home or if they make an error. The intent here is to afford users with a less forward-backward linear navigation, offering them a more agency over how they navigate the experience.
2. Added a brief onboarding card prior to the “Placing an order for pickup and storage” task to level-set user understanding of the process.
3. Created a detailed progress bar tying back to points from the previous onboarding card to provide more consistent and visible navigation to affirm their progress.
4. The "Supply FAQ" content has been moved above the fold and establishes consistent with the styling of the earlier "More Info" downward arrow. This feature anticipates and easily addresses common user questions, while also working to create more consistency and standardization in the way guiding information is presented.
5. Increased the visibility of user date and time selections to decrease possibility of errors.
6. Revised the icons and interface language in the “Gallery” or inventory tasks and adding text beneath each new icon to better match users' existing mental model: single box and multiple box icons, with "Gallery" being changed to "Collection." Each icon also has descriptive text below identifying what it's for, eliminating user guesswork.
7. Created a high-level tutorial modal in the “Gallery” section. Consumers struggled with the “Gallery” tasks, expressing a desire for more guidance and calls-to-action. A brief tutorial has also been added as a permanent icon on the top navigation bar, available to any users that need a refresher.
LAST, BUT NOT LEAST
I created a set of foundational style guidelines for Mylo to incorporate into their mobile app, based on the new prototype conventions.
Mylo reflective brand style guide