End-to-end design of a landscape management mobile app
Project Summary
I led design efforts to create a mobile app to increase operational efficiency for a landscape management company
Responsibilities
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User Interviews
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Experience Design
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Prototype & Usability Testing
Timeline & Team
2 weeks from start to finish, with onsite research with 3 company founders & 3 employees
Results
App launched successfully & increased Account Managers' book of business by 20%
Company Overview
Green Summit is a commercial landscape management company in New Mexico
The intended to eliminate operational inefficiencies due to managing their work orders on paper and in google sheets
Project Summary
My task was to design a mobile app to improve their efficiency in coordinating between office staff & field crews
During this 2 week project, I was the only designer, & worked closely with the client company founders and employees
Job shadowing and interviews revealed huge time waste
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1+ hrs of lost time each day driving back to job sites to take after photos to send to Account Managers
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Crews often had to purchase parts for repairs, & lost the receipts on their way back to the office
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Work Orders were printed on paper, then extra notes scribbled on them
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If notes were missed or illegible, work had to be discounted & finished another day
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Interviewing 2 Account Managers confirmed the issues
They were especially frustrated about having to discount work because of inefficient communication with the field crews
They also showed me the after photos they received from some Field Operations Managers & Crews:
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Some came via text, others via email
I was able to start forming 2 personas to design for
Based on the needs discovered in research, a digital work order with intuitive UX for adding key details appeared to be the solution the users needed
I spent the night mapping a flow for work orders, and designing a simple screen for crew members
I validated the designs with stakeholders & users, and then worked through further details in the flow - the cases to consider with Work Orders
Then I spent the following week iterating on the layout
Accessibility was key for this app
80% of the workers spoke Spanish, but 100% of the office staff spoke English. Because English was intertwined in the business, I included a language picker, but also made sure to have clear iconography and visual indicators throughout the app, with minimal text
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I did usability tests to determine the main icons for work order categories
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Clear icons selected for main actions to be completed as part of a work order
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Outcomes & Lessons
This project launched, and allowed their Account Managers to take on 20% more work, freeing up their founder to work on running the company
I learned how important observation can be
Everyone at the company had a lot of ideas, but only a few of them were painful enough to justify solving with the first version of this app, and those were observed, not spoken!
