Hairstylist booking app
Ui design/ Group project
Team goal
As a team of 3, with limited time, identify a people problem or challenge associated with the idea of scheduling.
People problem
Online appointment systems have gradually become a new trend, but many hair salons still take reservations on the phone. These include some small barbershops and freelance hairstylists, who often do not have enough funds to invest in online booking platform development. However, regular phone appointment scheduling has the following pain points: First, clients need to call the shop during working hours. They will also need to call to cancel the booking. Secondly, clients usually have difficulty finding the right professional hairstylist if they want to cut a particular hairstyle. Third, clients generally cannot get detailed information about prices and services until they arrive at the hair salon. It's not easy to find all the information they want to know in advance. This project focuses on optimizing the haircut booking process so that users have a better booking experience.
"How Might We"
We understand that there are already many apps on the market that can provide appointment booking servers. Most hair salons also allow customers to check and book appointments through phone calls or websites. Under this premise, how might we design an application that can stand out from others?
Prototype video
User story
As a user, I want the platform to recommend a haircut that suits me and make a list of hairstylists closest to me. I want to get reminders when the scheduled time is about to arrive and give me the option to cancel and change my appointment. I hope to complete the entire booking process quickly.
The idea
In the planning stage, we started with our own hair cutting experience and thought about what the customers would care about when they went to the barbershop. Then we realized that other than location and price, customers may wonder what hairstyle the barber can cut and hows the customer feedback about the barber. Based on these two relatively unnoticed user pain points, we decided to design a product that can focus on choosing hairstyles and customer ratings to enhance the booking experience.
My contribution
In this group project, I participated in the initial establishment of the idea and subsequent adjustments, then cooperated with group members to create a wireframe, low-fi prototype and hi-fi prototype. We held eight user testing then finished the final version of this product based on user feedback.
Userflow
On the discovery page, users will see a list of hairstyles with images, while the search bar and the filter feature are where users can tap to search for the target hairstyle. The application will recommend a list of barbers who are good at cutting this hairstyle based on other users' ratings. Then the users will be able to see detailed information about the selected barber to book an appointment. The current reservation will display on the booking section and the notification bar as a reminder.
Sketch
We first did some quick sketches about the key features(searching hairstyles, rating, booking based on schedule) to help us layout.
Wireframe
Based on the sketch, we made a few frames of low fidelity prototype for critique and feedback, then expanded them to high fidelity prototype with more content.
High-fidelity prototype
User-testing
What are we trying to learn?
● Is the experience of scheduling a haircut appointment efficient and enjoyable?
● Are users encounter problems and get stuck. For example, Confusing navigation and misleading buttons.
● Does it require additional explanation and guidance?
● Are there any pain points when scheduling an appointment?
● Where we can make improvements and what really matters to users?
Key Questions
● What was the best/worst thing about this app experience?
● Have you had experience with scheduling haircuts online?
● If you could change one thing about this mobile app, what would it be? What did you like about the site?
● On a scale of 1-10, how familiar are you with haircut booking?
● What was the best/worst thing about this app experience?
● If you could change one thing about this mobile app, what would it be?
● What did you like about the site?
● Can users find what they’re looking for?
● Do users love and want to tell their friends about this app?
Hypothesis
● Some users do not know what kind of hairstyle they want, and they are pleased to accept the recommendations from the platform.
● Users want to book an appointment quickly and get automated notifications such as confirmations and reminders. They would like to have an option to change or cancel the booking anytime on the app.
User-testing result
● The user wants to add a nearby locations option on the filter page to find the stylist closest to them quickly.
● Users want to add a view more button at the bottom of the discover page to know more pictures are coming.
● Users hope that the stylist's information is more detailed, such as the city where they live and whether any of their friends have used the services he provides.
● When the user clicks on the favourite icon on the bottom menu, it returns to the homepage.
● The user does not understand the meaning of the address icon on the stylist page - (need to replace the icon or add some text to explain the purpose)
● The tick icon that users see on the success page should be green instead of red.
More to consider
● The hairstyle pictures are not so attractive to the user ( We need to do some research and choose the most popular hairstyle to display on the homepage).
● Users would like all interaction is active. They want to choose according to their own wishes, rather than just set the scene for them, for example, "you now need to select the mid-length man hair". However, due to time constraints, our app cannot achieve all functions.
● Users want us to consider adding a payment process for them to choose whether to complete the payment in advance before going to the haircut.
