FixIY
Fix-It-Yourself
The problem:
Millennial homeowners and renters report difficulty in finding reliable and affordable contractors that return on the value they promise, as well as a lack of millennial DIY knowhow, this is a problem that has long led to frustration.
The solution:
On-demand home services apps that put the control back into the hands of homeowners and renters.
What are we building?
A full end-to-end digital platform for home repairs.
Exploratory Research:
The US online on-demand home services sector was valued at around $400 billion dollars in 2015, and has been growing ever since. Our team saw a huge opportunity in the market. To start answering our research questions, we sent out a survey.
The Survey:
We sent out a survey and focused on:
How the pandemic affected people’s renovation projects
How working From Home affects the time and budget for Home Improvements
We had 36 responses. The participants were all millennials, homeowners, renters, or landlords, and need things around the house to be updated, constructed, cleaned, or worked on.
Competitive Analysis: None of the competitors we looked at offered the user a one-stop shop, and we saw a huge opportunity in the DIY market.
Affinity Diagram: In the Affinity Diagram, we grouped together all the main categories of resources and pain points relating to our users, those who are handy and tend to do things themselves and those who are not and tend to hire a contractor.
Persona: We synthesized our research into two primary personas and a problem statement.
Problem Statement: The busy DIY-er needs a way to improve their home on their own and/or with the help of a professional because of their budget and time constraints.
Design Principles:
Empower the User: Give the user an ample source to learn skills or request assistance to take control of the problems they have at hand.
Simplicity is Key: When designing, keeping things simple and clean can help the user get what they need without them becoming frustrated.
Design for Discovery: To build an environment for our users to not only get what they originally came for, but to also ignite new ideas and new foundation of knowledge.
Concepts & low fidelity prototypes:
One of the features I worked on was ‘My Collection’ where users could save posts they are seeing into a private folder that could be shared.
Future Recommendations:
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate!
Consider and test out gamification DIYxp process
Add a way to designate Expert DIY status allowing users to take jobs
Building a contractor portal app to review job offers, bid, and message homeowners
Adding a feature to help source parts at local hardware stores
Adding a material cost calculator for larger jobs
Consider a social network for DIYers to share and collaborate on projects