Why a redesign?

The company was changing it's model from posting tasks and bidding to a completely different system that was more focused on directly hiring Taskers. Many of the old designs didn't map to the new experience TaskRabbit had envisioned for the new business model. Months of user research testing out a similar model in the UK showed that the business would benefit in the long run; The rate of tasks being finished were double the the current rate in the US, Taskers were more likely to be hire and paid better, and Clients would hire repeat Taskers.

General process of the following projects

To give you an idea of the process of the many of the projects below, they were ad hoc and finished within a very short timeline. TaskRabbit had already done months of user research before I had started, so I used that knowledge to help guide my designs. I always started with sketches and eventually moved to Photoshop and Sketch to finish up designs after reviews and design critique.

How do Clients or Taskers sign up or log in to TaskRabbit?

I didn't have anything to start with, so we looked at other services to draw inspiration and patterns from. I sketched on paper some quick ideas and mocked them up. With feedback from other designers, I designed the flow and took into consideration of different states and edge cases for signing up and logging in. Click here to see this live on TaskRabbit.

 

How do Clients keep current with the status of a task?

After creating Client and Tasker accounts within the staging server, I wanted to understand how tasks worked by creating and doing tasks. After exploring and understanding that different states were missing from tasks, I sketched and mocked up different states of the design to handle tasks with multiple Taskers, different statuses of tasks, edge cases, and error states. The importance of this feature was to allow Clients to view the current status of a task and the Tasker associated with the task. Click here to see this live if you currently have a task booked on TaskRabbit.

 

How do Clients find Taskers for other types of tasks?

I tested the old version of TaskRabbit to see how tasks were posted and also looked at other patterns on how search works. After a few iterations and feedback, I landed onto a more semantic way of searching. The task search was a way for Clients to find Taskers that could do tasks didn't match to any of the defined task categories. This feature used to have it's own section on the site but now it's the primary feature for searching for tasks on TaskRabbit. Click here to see this live on TaskRabbit.

 

How do Clients review task history and what can they do with that?

To get a sense of how people want to see task history, I looked at many design patterns related to purchases, transactions, and receipts to understand the most important components related to task history. I had an opportunity to talk to customer support to get their feedback about what mattered the most to Clients especially when they called in about tasks. What I learned was that it's disputes about tasks are common. I focused the design on giving a full detailed account about tasks. This would allow Clients and Taskers to see what was agreed upon from when tasks were posted to task being completed. This feature disclosed full detailed information about a task, invoices, their interactions, and reviews. This feature also allowed them to repeat a task, look up Taskers from previous tasks, and download receipts. Click here to see this live if you've used TaskRabbit in the past.

 

How do Clients hire the same Taskers again?

"How do I hire the same Tasker again?" was a common question that was asked by Clients. This concern came up when I sat through a user research session where another designer and a product manager tested the new TaskRabbit experience with a current Client. Although Task History existed, it was necessary for Clients to have another view for the list of all the Taskers they've ever hired. Your Taskers allowed Clients to see all the Taskers they hired in the past and gives them the opportunity to hire them again. Click here to see this live if you've used TaskRabbit in the past.

What was the impact and results of the redesign?

Initially the redesign had a rough start as Clients and Taskers were accustomed to the old system. Despite the short term reaction, the results were positive in the long term.

Reliability and trust
Being able to view Taskers and their ratings and reviews allowed Clients to trust more in the system and the Taskers they hired.

More Taskers hired
Focusing on the lifecycle of a task from searching to hiring Taskers that specialized in the task needed to be done encouraged Clients to hire more Taskers.

Repeat business
Clients were satisfied with the Taskers they got matched up with and ended up hiring them again. The amount of repeat tasks increased 100% month over month.

Lessons learned
When there are major changes with a product that is already used, users will be frustrated and uncomfortable. We learned that when a big change is in the near future, you should be extremely vigilant in communicating with your users, allowing them an opportunity to have a discussion, and keeping them in mind and involved with the changes.