My Role
Product Owner & Design Lead
Time
Dec 2015 - Jan 2017
What is Dconfianza.com?
Dconfianza is a web platform that connects users to local service providers. It provides a venue for service providers to showcase their prior work, references, and skills. Lowering the barrier of entry for newcomers.
The following process summarizes the steps behind the 2-year conception of my startup .
UX Skills
Wireframing - User Research - Usability Testing Design
Management Skills
Negotiation - Leadership - Market Research - Business Analysis
Overview
Our idea started when I saw my family struggling to find a plumber for something that needed an urgent fix. The fact that it would be so difficult to find a service provider confused me and triggered my curiosity. This then led me and my business partner to conduct a number of interviews and meeting with family members, friends, and known workers.
Our goal was to understand the different ways in which people in Caracas went about hiring service professionals and pinpoint the different problems faced during this process.
The information obtained through interviews yielded these facts
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In Venezuela word of mouth is a traditional way of finding new hires
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A newcomer service provider has a very big barrier to overcome when getting his first few jobs
User Research
Problem Definition
Our findings led us to understand that there were many issues faced by the population in Caracas when it came to looking for a service provider. We decided to focus on three of the most recurring ones:
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People were reluctant to let unknown service providers into their homes because of the safety issues currently faced in Venezuela
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This reluctance to hire unknown providers led people to hire only providers that were referred by a family or friend
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Finding new service providers was difficult. The current solutions had little options and the yellow pages were the go-to alternative. All other solutions seemed sketchy, unprofessional and unsafe.
This stage also led us to define our target users/customers.
Taking this into account we defined our primary persona as follows:
Primary Persona - Mid-income home owner
Irene is a lawyer that just moved into her first house a few months ago. She has long work hours and has little time to deal with things like cleaning and repair at home. She is an avid user of all things tech and she often relies on apps and solutions to solve her problems.
She is currently seeking to hire help to finish some things in her new home. Usually, she hires only people she has heard of through word of mouth but normally these people are not available on short notice. Recently, Irene has had to start reaching out to help she doesn't know and wishes there was a better way to see their credentials and past work.
Given our app features another user, we defined a secondary persona:
Secondary Persona - Entry- Mid Level Service Provider
Jasper is a talented carpenter and handyman that just moved to another state. He knows few people in this new place, he needs to start to build his customer base from scratch. He is also aware this is not an easy task as people are sometimes hesitant when hiring new help, especially when work needs to be done inside their homes.
As a new member of the service provider workforce, Jasper wishes there was an easy and quick way he could show his work and experience and provide references from old employers.
In addition, we developed a business canvas model to further analyze our business proposition.
Problem Statement
"Citizens in Caracas between the age of 20-45 need a way to hire professional service providers that will guarantee their safety and that of their home"
These problems seemed difficult to tackle initially but after several rounds of brainstorming, we decided that a web solution would be the best alternative. The decision seemed to make the most sense because of the fact that most people look for service providers through web-based applications rather than mobile ones in Caracas.
Once having decided on the modality of our solution we proceeded to brainstorm the minimum features our web application needed to have to be able to solve our persona's problems.
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The features we decided our MVP needed to posses were:​​​
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A thorough registration process for service providers. Workers would need to provide identification, updated photo, work license and have no criminal records.
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An easy to use search function where users can filter workers by area and expertise.
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A review system to provide accountability as well as additional information that can influence the hiring process.
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A personal landing page for each worker where they can add personal information, view their reviews and showcase previous work.
Brainstorming & Ideation
Our first prototype was on a piece of paper where we laid out the flow we wanted in our application as well as the different screens involved. We then showed this prototype to our family members and friends and made a few iterations. Additionally, we also sat down with a few workers our families knew and showed them the design as they too would be users of the application.
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The most important changes came as a result of the meetings with the workers. Modifications to make the registration process easier and faster were needed as well as a more visual representation of how to navigate the application.​
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Prototyping
Once our prototype was finished we were able to test it with a small group of subjects. We recruited mainly family and friends to make sure the application provided the required safety measures so that it could be later open to the public.
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Regrettably, because of the situation in Venezuela, our idea did not seem viable and would not produce the proper income to keep it afloat. This is why as of 2017 we decided to put the project on hold until the situation improves.