Client

Super was a Norwegian home services startup, providing services such as cleaning, wellness and personal training to people, in their home. They were in their early stage and aspired to become the Amazon of home services.

Challenges

• the visual quality and usability of the existing website was turning potential new customers away.

• their service offerings seemed scattered and did not feel timely in the context of the covid pandemic.

Approach and Process

An explorative approach of design through sketching was used to condense the service offerings and to make them more context appropriate. The project went through problem selection, ideation (through sketching), prototyping and testing where ideas were visualised and constantly validated.

My role

• Help the founding team analyse the usability and aesthetics of the existing website using existing customer insights.

• Create concepts exploring what version 1.0 of Super’s website could be.

1 a. Sketching

Sketching was done in short collaborative workshops. As time was short, the process relied on pre-gathered user insights. The founding team continuously collaborated to represent stakeholder needs.

1 b. Customer and stakeholder feedback

• Trying to pretend that you are big while you are not might break trust.

• Getting new service providers to register will be crucial in the initial phases, but not in the later phases.

2 a. Concepts

Super wanted to help society in a meaningful way during the pandemic while validate their service offerings.

This need led to two concepts. A utilitarian, volunteer website, where they who need help and those who are willing to help could meet and another one which celebrates the “birth” of this startup.

2 b. Testing - what we learnt

• Customers are averse to small companies pretending to be big.

• Many Norwegians are easily willing to volunteer, but on the other hand, hesitate to accept help for free. Paying for a service creates trust.

• Customers hesitate to get services which require a stranger to visit their home - but are comfortable with it after getting acquainted first.

3 a. Results

The founders were delighted to learn that design can contribute with more than just visuals and could also help validate concepts.

However, in the interest of launching something as soon as possible, the alternative concepts were put on hold and the team chose to go with a slightly more polished version of the existing website.

3 b. Learnings

• The clients had assumed that offering services for free might help gain market, but were proven wrong.

• We learnt that Norwegians trust a service through the people who deliver them rather than the service itself. They might not base trust on a brand.

As a designer I learnt that a lot could be done in short time, if the clients and the designers are equally committed.