Domestic Work Agreement Tool
Simplifying the Complex
House cleaners, nannies, gardeners, and home health aides - these are the domestic workers that busy Americans rely on to care for their homes and loved ones.
Unfortunately, this type of work does not always receive the same benefits and protections common in other professions.
Hand in Hand wants to change that. They are a nonprofit organization focused on elevating the value of domestic work through education and policy change.
SCOPE
New Concept
End-to-end mobile experience
White-label solution for client pitches
TEAM
3 UX Designers
MY ROLES
Lead of Information Architecture
+ Project Manager
+ Partner in Research
+ Partner in Interaction Design
Understanding the Business
My team met with a representative of the Seattle chapter of Hand in Hand to understand the business needs.
BUSINESS PROBLEM
Formally written domestic work agreements ensure protections for both parties, but not many people create them. Hand in Hand wants to make it easy to create an agreement for domestic work services.
BUSINESS GOAL
Gain funding to launch a scalable solution to support a recent Seattle domestic work policy change. Longer-term goals involve creating a nation-wide solution.
Uncovering Complexities
While orienting ourselves in this problem space and speaking to potential users, it became evident that this project was brimming with complexity.
A content audit of existing pdf agreement templates revealed that there were many variations of agreements that the solution would need to accommodate for, each with different content needs.
Data gathered from 1:1 user interviews and an online survey gave us insights into another layer of complexity – the variety of user needs.
My team distilled the key findings from discovery and user research and defined the design opportunity.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
How might we optimize the creation of domestic work agreements, so that the experience is easy, flexible, informative and collaborative?
Laying the Foundation
After the research phase, I jumped into my primary role - building the information architecture. In addition to considering how the structure would allow the user experience to be easy, flexible, informative and collaborative, I also took into account the need for the system to be adaptable to multiple use cases and easily scalable.
Wrangling Content
The first step of building this tool’s architecture was to gather and categorize all of the information that would be contained within the tool. I had gathered and inventoried the necessary content during the research phase. Next, I began grouping and categorizing the gathered information, looking for the ideal taxonomy that would allow this tool to become an easy, fluid experience for the user.
1
I first grouped the information together by similarity, regardless of service type.
2
From the groupings, I then identified which groups of information were necessary for a basic agreement and which groups of information could be optional and used to create a more complex agreement. This established the two, high-level categories - Standard and Optional.
Mapping a Flow
While keeping in mind user needs uncovered during research, I designed a flow to represent the series of tasks performed during the creation of a work agreement.
The start of a new agreement through Section 7 represents the creation of a standard work agreement. Users then have the option to build more complexity by adding modules in Section 8.
This modular structure not only accommodates for all types of known user needs and service types, but also allows this system to be easily scaled in future iterations.
Making it Collaborative
After defining the basic agreement creation flow, I outlined the collaborative flow of the tool.
To avoid confusion and users overriding one another, I defined two distinct user roles assigned by the system.
While the owner has access to all functionality of the tool, the contributor has limited access.
A contributor has defined screens when entering and exiting the tool.
Testing and Reiterating
Usability testing revealed that the collaborative features were not initially intuitive. Participants were not expecting this type of functionality in this context, and the collaboration indicators were often overlooked.
Our team iterated on the collaboration control indicator until discovery improved.
Sketching phase informed functionality and placement
Low discoverability during testing
Low discoverability during testing
High discoverability during testing
The Foundation Informing the Design
The design solution for this project was a collaborative, mobile web tool that makes the experience of creating domestic work agreements easy, flexible, and informative.
Building the information structure and mapping the flows at the beginning of this project influenced the process of designing the screens and interactions.
Providing a Fluid Experience
Horizontal sequencing, clear signposts throughout, and intuitive input fields make this tool an easy and informative experience for users.
Ensuring a Flexible User Journey
In-tool navigation enables flexibility for users to move freely between sections.
Delivering to the Client
After 10 weeks of working on this project, my team delivered to Hand in Hand designs for a complete mobile experience. The client plans to use the designs for pitching the idea to local governments, in hopes that it will be funded and built to support domestic work policies.
I wanted to thank each of you so much for your amazing work with SVC. What you came up with was so inspiring, and I really hope that we can partner with the city of Seattle to make it a reality!
-Erica from Hand in Hand
I Came. I Designed. I Learned.
Working on this project reinforced for me my enthusiasm for information architecture and interaction design. I was most energized when I was digging deep, sorting through details, organizing, mapping, and then testing use cases against design iterations.
Being a partner in all of the research initiatives gave me a greater appreciation for the hard work that goes into designing and conducting generative user research. Participant recruitment was especially difficult for this project, but I came away with some scrappy techniques under my belt.
