How to Reimagine a Product's Strategy to Improve User Engagement

A client came to my agency wanting to redesign their app. Their product was a job posting board for construction workers, but they rarely saw users return after the first visit. We used user research to conceptualize a more engaging user experience. As a result of our findings, the client signed an additional work order with my agency to design the new app.

Project Overview

The Product

The product was created by owners of a construction company in New York City who constantly struggle to hire qualified workers. They built this app to solve their problem.

The Team

My agency’s discovery team was made up of just 2 other designers and a PM. I was the lead designer overseeing a senior UX designer and a junior UX designer.

My Role

As the lead, I managed the project workflow and client relationship. As an individual contributor, I owned the research outputs for the “job seeker” persona while the senior UX designer owned the "employer" persona.

Identifying Opportunities and Ideating New Concept Directions

We kicked off the project by creating a research plan. We set out to understand: who are these construction workers and employers? How do they find jobs today? What makes job hunting hard? What makes it easy? And what do they use today to help them find a job?

To answer our research questions, we interviewed job seekers and employers. We collected our notes in an interview database where we tagged and categorized all the data we collected. We pulled the key findings from the database and put them in Miro so we could create affinity maps. Then we synthesized the findings at a high level to produce personas and journey maps.

From the research, we identified a few areas of opportunities for high engagement. Together with the client, we decided on which areas to pursue. We then ideated a few concepts for the new direction for the app. We reviewed these concepts with the client and aligned on one of them to move forward with. This became the foundation for the new app. Due to an NDA, I am not able to share deliverables form this portion of the project.

This project took place during the pandemic. All interviews, synthesis, and client presentations took place remotely. We relied on Miro to collaborate.