User Study and Analysis
In this section we will be looking at a high-level summary of the user research process. This coincides with the discover stage of the double diamond design model.
Primary Users
We aim to help homeowners / household members who may lack experience handling household problems before or find it inconvenient to source for contractors when they need one. We have identified them as they are a group that might have the most pain points going through the home-repair process. As aforementioned, most problems arise from ignorance. With them not having much experience in such issues and in the interest of saving time, they are likely to benefit most from our project. Some of the sub user groups include:
  1. Inexperienced: First-time homeowners/household members (never had experience with contractors before)
  2. Experienced: Seasoned homeowners/household members (have used contractors before)
Recruitment methods
We recruited our primary users by using the following methods:
  1. Contact homeowners through family and friends.
  2. Making use of social media such as Telegram channels with a large user base.
  3. Using Instagram to reach out to find people in our user group to help do surveys.
Sampling Methods
The following sampling methods were utilized to assist us in preliminary market research by helping us to get insights on whether there are sufficient pain points that drive a need for an application with contractors.
  1. Convenience sampling
  2. Snowball sampling
Hypothesis and Assumptions
We listed out some initial hypotheses around the problem space that we intend to tackle. We can test these hypotheses in our user study to get a idea of what the homeowners might be looking for.
  1. Getting contractor help is the typical solution when homeowners face home repair issues
  2. It is hard to find a contractor
  3. It is difficult to identify the problem
  4. It is tedious to identify who is the right contractor for a given problem
  5. Pricing transparency/Prices can greatly influence a homeowners' decision to hire a particular contractor
Study Methods & Rationale
We performed 3 main types of study methods:
  1. Survey
  2. Interviews
  3. Contextual Inquiry
These study methods helped us to gather useful information about the users and helped us gauge the interest in our proposed solutions by getting a clear understanding of their pain points.
User Study Results
The results gathered from the user study are represented below:
  1. Homeowner survey
  2. Contractor survey
  3. Homeowner Interview
In general, most homeowners live in either HDBs or Condominiums. In general, these types of housing have less issues/ lesser need for contractors or maintenance as compared to landed properties. However, this is still a good estimate of homeowners since the majority of Singaporeans do not stay in landed properties.
Overall Findings and Analysis
Having collated all the results from the various forms of study methods, we took note of the trends and patterns we have noticed and created an affinity diagram from the data in order to get a better understanding of our users. Based on our user research methods, utilizing user interviews, contextual inquiries and surveys, we will present and analyses our findings below.
ContractMe
Full Affinity Diagram
We have taken the findings from our user research, namely user statements, key observations, design ideas and grouped them based on their similarities and trends.
From there, we came up with 6 main groups (blue note) where each yellow note belonged to.
  1. Pricing and pricing transparency is important to me
  2. Trustworthiness and reliability of contractors are important to me
  3. Having a good selection of contractors is important to me
  4. Referral and returned customers are channels for me to get contracts
  5. I try to self diagnose the issues first
  6. I want the service to be fast
From this process, we managed to identify certain pain points and key considerations of our target users and will be able to make actionable decisions based on these results. Moving on to the next level in the hierarchy, we further distilled these 6 main groups (blue note) into 2 higher-level groups (pink note).
  1. Pricing matters to me
  2. Quality of contractor service is important to me
In conclusion, after the affinity diagram process we have managed to distill 2 high-level concepts that our primary user group, homeowners value. From these 2 high-level concepts, we have 6 main concepts that further define and shape what kind of features or tasks a user expects to accomplish with our application. Based on our user study and analysis of the results, we will be able to craft scenarios and storyboards that a potential user will most likely go through while using our application to solve their needs. Further down the design process, these results will then shape the designs and features that will be in our wireframes and prototypes.
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