Overview

Spotwork is a start-up company that connects people to flexible and temporary jobs in their area.

They offer positions in industries such as:

The Problem

Spotwork only offers positions in Canada and 1099 jobs.

Being a small startup and only based in Canada, they lacked information about the 1099 and W-2 employment processes in the states. Our team was asked to research popular gig apps, design an onboarding process for W-2 and 1099 workers that includes an educational aspect (1099 vs W-2) because they want to expand to America + add W-2 jobs.

bonus

A common pain point we noticed with most of the gig apps was their customer support. Spotwork did not have a chatbot for fast replies on their app, just an email to reach them during business hours.

➔ redesign their contact option to giving users an option to either email or use the chatbot

Each apps weaknesses:

To summarize this table, the common pain points founded were:

• Hard to know how much longer the onboarding process is left to finish

• Sign up is not smooth and/or takes a long time

• Not enough jobs open in an area

• Not enough variety

• Only available in some cities 

• Last minute cancellation from employers

• Wrong clock ins cause wrong payments

• Poor customer support - slow or no responses

• Software glitches 

user flow

Spotwork was unsure which route to take to step in to the U.S. with.

After giving our competitor analysis presentation, Spotwork expressed they were not sure if they should shift to only W-2 jobs, or give users the option to onboard both 1099 and W-2. To help them make their decision, we created two user flows for a first time user onboarding.

After presenting this, they decided to include 1099 and W-2 jobs on Spotwork.

5 day sprint

Our last week with Spotwork called for a five day sprint.

Most of our time with Spotwork was spent researching what entails 1099 and W-2 jobs in the US and analyzing competitors. Once presenting all of our information and deciding how to go about introducing Spotwork in the United States, we had one week left to finish with visuals. To finish this project, a team member organized a design sprint for our last week:

day 1: ideate

Using competitors UI as inspiration, we used the crazy 8s method: eight ideas in eight minutes. This exercise is commonly used in design sprints to help to come up with ideas quickly and hopefully potential screens.

Day 2: Sketch 

To refine the quick sketches above, these were created for a more detailed version close to what we would like the final product to look like. Sections of the app we focused on includes: education, my jobs + my messages and job search

Education

On the ‘Learn’ page, we added sections to learn about what a 1099 worker and W-2 employee is, as well as how to use Spotwork.

Spotwork asked us to focus on the educational aspect of their app as they want their users to be knowledgeable of what position they’re onboarding for and what that encompasses (documents, benefits, etc.).

day 3: prototype

We created the sketches above (plus more) as low-fidelity wireframes, then prototyped them to test for day four. In efforts to showcase a redesign that is suitable for the app, we kept a similar UI to the current design. This will also help Spotwork’s design team to implement our subtle but critical changes.

‘Learn’ page

• Educational component

day 4: test

Each of us performed moderated in person usability tests with the prototyped screens above with one or two people that met these qualifications:

U.S. Citizen

We asked each participant to:

① Go through each page in the bottom navigation bar

The results

We combined all of our testing comments and recommendations in a table, listing each from critical to minor issues.

Most issues were UI related like the chat icon not needed on each page, the thin bar was confusing, or unopened messages were not indicated. Other issues were related to the forms during the onboarding process, such as the W-4 form is for employees before starting a job and W-2 form is given at the end of a year from the employer.

day 5: redesign

With the feedback we got, we redesigned a few screens for a better experience.

Before

• The question mark blended with the background

• Chat button on every page was unnecessary

conclusion

What I learned and will take forward with me.

I believe we exceeded the expectations and goals of this project 🎉.

We gave research heavy presentations about Gig apps and W-2 vs 1099 workers in the U.S. + a 5 day design sprint that included prototyped flows, usability tests and redesigns. Spotwork was very pleased with our research and designs!

Some key takeaways:

• Giving each other our schedules and planning meetings ahead of time. A team member (thanks Moon) sent out a form in the beginning of this project for what hours and days work best for all of us to meet. This allowed us to be able to meet 2-3x a week easily, keeping our communication very strong!

• Divide and Conquer. We divided our work between each other, creating an even balance and reasonable amount for each person. This let us meet our deadlines quicker with no extra stress on anyone.

I am grateful for this experience as it is very valuable to my UX/UI journey. Working with other designers, a startup company and learning about the Gig app industry was a fun experience! I shall take what I learned from this adventure and apply it to future projects 🥳