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PROJECT BACKGROUND

Mobile Doorman is a native app for iOS & Android where residents can manage their living experience.
Here’s a list of some of the features:

  • Online Payments

  • Maintenance Requests

  • Package Notifications

  • Virtual Bulletin Board

  • Authorized Guests

  • Pet Registration

  • Surveys

  • Marketplace

  • Messages between Residents and Staff

Amenity Reservations

As we continued to build out new functionality for Mobile Doorman, a top priority was to allow residents to reserve amenities, which could also provide additional income for properties. With everything that has happened this year, this is a feature that was added at the right time. I conducted user interviews and moderated usability testing with users to fully understand how they might use this and to give them the best experience possible.

Empathize

I lived downtown Austin at the time, so I was able to just walk to a lot of the apartment complexes that used Mobile Doorman. I sat down with multiple property managers and residents to understand how they handled reservations. Mobile Doorman for Property Managers was a web-based tool that had a calendar feature, but it wasn’t utilized very often. We found out that a large amount of properties used their own tools or wrote info on sheets of paper to book amenity spaces, which led to overbooked spaces and headaches.

“I just want residents to book times and it will show up on our calendar too.”

“We really would like to charge for some of our rentable iPads and scooters.”

“I don’t know how to book a room so I end up just not doing it”

Define

The Problem
There wasn’t one uniform process that property managers used to schedule and receive payments for rentals. Some used third-party tools, while users required residents to physically come into the office to make their reservation where signing was all done on paper.

The Goal
The goal was to build one consistent way that property managers and residents could schedule and pay for reservable spaces

 

Pain Points

  1. Consistency
    Some used third party tools, others used paper.

  2. Dirty Amenities
    There wasn’t a clear way to show expectations for usage.

  3. Automatic
    Property managers didn’t want to have to do anything manual.

  4. Income
    No way to show prices if needed.

 

IDEATE

Our design sprint structure drew significant inspiration from Jake Knapp's 5-day sprints, which we tailored to better suit our small startup. These design sessions were held weekly via Zoom, and we opted for a shared Google Slides document to minimize costs. We initiated the process by mapping out User Needs, Business Needs, and anticipated technical constraints. Armed with this comprehensive information, we proceeded with a rapid 10-minute round of "crazy 8’s." Following this, everyone in the session presented their ideas. Each participant was allotted 2 votes, offering valuable insights into the most promising directions for our project.

Thanks to our established design system, we smoothly transitioned from initial sketches to high-fidelity designs. This allowed us to promptly start conceptualizing the ideas that were agreed upon during the Design Session.

Usability Study Findings

“This is so so so much better than what we have now”

“It would be great if we could cancel this reservation on the home screen too”

“Payment info can’t save? I would be really annoyed if I had to enter my card info every time I did this”

Outcome

Launched in January 2020

Resident staff additions were made, allowing them to modify how many people were allowed in certain areas at a time.

Other enhancements, like additional payment methods were added.

We received overwhelmingly positive feedback for having this feature readily available during a time of uncertainty.

 

Resident Staff were able to easily update and add new amenities straight from the staff portal. Adding in specifics like email alerts and how much an amenity might cost was very easy to accomplish. A bird’s eye view of the week is shown, with the ability to select specific amenities to see who has booked time for that day.