Tracy H Wang PhD
Cognitive Neuroscience / UX Research / Creative Consulting
Background
MoreHands Maid Service is a family run small business in the Texas area, with branches in Austin, Dallas and Houston. The CEO asked for an assessment of the brand, a new service and the need for a dedicated app.
UXR Goal:
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Assess new product rollout of laundry services
Brand assessment
Assess need for mobile application
Role:
UX Research Consultant
Timeline:
4 weeks
The Research
Journey
Creating a UX roadmap:
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With the CEO, we identified his research priorities and I came up with a plan to achieve these UX goals. We identified 3 major items of interest:
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1) Brand Assessment - Are Clients aware of that MoreHand Maid Service is a family-run company that prioritizes a living wage? What do Clients generally think of MoreHand and does this contribute to service loyalty?
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2) New Product Assessment - This goal was twofold - 1) Assess the viability of the new laundry service (wash and fold, outsourced dry-cleaning) and 2) What are priorities for certain customer segments?
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3) New mobile app assessment - do we need a new mobile app? How do clients fare with the current text interface?
Summary of Client Personas: With Customer Lists, I prioritized targeting 3 non-exclusive lean UX personas (with mainly goals/frustrations in mind).
The Parent:
Parent or Parents of Small Children often have priorities that go beyond cleaning. With families, laundry is a substantial and constant priority - what affects motivation to utilize laundry services for families?
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The Millennial:
The new tech generation in which online services are often used. If they already use meal, grocery shopping and other life "assistant" type services, what would the motivation be to add cleaning and laundry services?
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The Working Professional: With 40+ hour weeks, how do working professionals or dual income households prioritize work-life balance? Is time a motivation to utilize cleaning and laundry services?
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Because we were also asking about Branding, we were also interested in Clients at different stages of retention.
We outlined questions for Structured Interviews regarding brand, product use and technology interaction for each of the client stages of retention. Each largely followed out goal outlines but also were slightly modified for each client stage.
Client Recruitment and Scheduling:
We recruited and conducted structured interviews to address our goals. Clients were recruited through email, with a 30% off next cleaning service with participation. Interviews were scheduled and conducted by phone.
Over three weeks, I conducted client interviews and aggregated responses to generate insights
Client interviews
Insights and
Assessments
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Insight: for the new laundry service, the priority was pricing and convenience. Since convenience was a high priority
Assessment: Modify awareness of the new laundry service by providing laundry "bags" during cleaning service - plastic bags that also served as a reminder that the service was available. This was a more pertinent reminder of the service other than email and also conveniently provided transportation containers encouraging use.
2. Insight: Client satisfaction with the current text system high and need for a new mobile app system low.
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Assessment: Pre-interview, the likelihood to build a mobile app was 90%, post-interview - there was a determination that building a mobile app system was currently not a priority.
3. Insight: Clients aware of the MoreHands Brand and tended to be brand loyal due their perception of company's ethics and responsibility to their employees or client's were unaware of brand and prioritized competitive pricing.
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Assessment:
Since Brand Awareness -> Brand loyalty, Provide more background information in the form of stories or employee highlights about individuals on cleaning employee teams to encourage trust and dependability between clients and employee cleaning crews.
