PEOPLE IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY ARE BUSY.
And so are their clients.
And so are their client’s clients.
See where this is going?
And so are their client’s clients.
See where this is going?
Pearl's Pool Service & Repairs is a trusted pool care company that utilizes a platform for all client management and communications. With service industries that rely on routine appointments, bookings can get complicated when clients cancel, reschedule, or are misinformed by their technicians.
This product allows the client to sign into their pool care account, make, change, or cancel appointments, update information regarding their contract, billing, contact information, and pool information. It minimizes miscommunication, accidental scheduling errors, and helps the appointment-based business stay organized and improve their customer service.
The Brief
The goal of this product is to simplify client management, communication, and scheduling– specifically for service-based businesses. There is a lot to tackle within that, and in order to design within context, Pearl’s Pool Service & Repairs is used as a host to help guide the design to a relative solution. This digital product needs to expedite the booking process to create higher conversion rates and make the client feel at ease when managing their account.
So let's get started.
THE PROCESS AND SOLUTIONS
Although the bulk of this project was based on the UI design, the brand identity of Pearl’s was still done with intention. The brand needed to feel crisp, trustworthy, and embody a sense of uniqueness in order to stand out among other pool care businesses.
The logo is made up of a brand mark that shows an abstracted pool ladder and a simple wave to illustrate the pool water. This logomark sits inside of a circle frame, and it was all built with basic geometric shapes.
The logotype is a sans serif that is tall and bold but remains approachable. The counters are perfect circles, making it a nice pairing to the roundness of the logomark.
COLORS & TYPOGRAPHY
For the branding, the colors are bright, fresh, and give a feeling of cleanliness. The typography used primarily on the user interface is Poppins, and Sora is used as a display typeface that would change according to the business using the interface to then make it more custom to each brand.
SITE DIAGRAMS & WIREFRAMES
After a large audit on pools sites, scheduling apps, asking others, and personal experience, I found that the main features that needed to be present are:
An organized and concise dashboard for easy navigation and a place to gather an overview of everything on your account.
An appointment manager to easily book, change or cancel appointments without any complications.
An updates section for all appointment results. As well as the ability to send and receive messages directly from technicians or other service providers.
A profile section in order to keep your information up to date, see all receipts, payment information, and upcoming bills.
MARKETING WEBSITE DESIGN
With Pearl’s being the vessel to illustrate this product concept, a marketing site would be needed to reach the target market, increase conversion rates, and be a resource for their current and future clients. The marketing website includes 3 pages: Home, About, and Services. There, you can also log in to enter the client management platform.
The goal of the marketing website design was to showcase a start to end process that a user would experience when using the scheduling platform.
The ideal route a user would perform would be to:
1. Navigate the site and learn more about business.
2. Follow a call to action to fill out contact information
3. Instantly schedule an appointment
4. Gain access to their personalized dashboard.
1. Navigate the site and learn more about business.
2. Follow a call to action to fill out contact information
3. Instantly schedule an appointment
4. Gain access to their personalized dashboard.
The flow is seamless and makes the user feel secure and relaxed when using the product.
The hero images for each page showcase beautiful pools, with an overlay to provide high contrast for the typography. The pool tiles and wave illustrations are used for section dividers and underline to headlines to keep the brand system consistent and ensure brand recognition.
The website and client management product are responsive, so mobile users can access their account from their handheld devices without problems.
THE PRODUCT DESIGN
It is important that the system is easy to understand and navigate. The design utilizes white rectangles or “cards” that showcase the content in an organized grid to separate information for straightforward understanding. Since this product could be used by other service industries, these cards allow the content to be completely editable and can be moved/ resized to best suit what is needed.
In order to best understand the flow of the client management by diving into each main page.
Dashboard
The Dashboard, showcased above, is similar to a typical homepage. It is the page you first see when you sign in and gives a brief overview of the latest updates, appointment reminders, and in Pearl’s Pool Service & Repairs case, the latest pool levels.
APPOINTMENTS
Easily book, change or cancel an appointment with a few clicks. This software makes it easy to manage your appointments by allowing the user to select what they would like to do; book new services, change appointments, or cancel appointments. This leaves no room for confusion and empowers the user to do what works best for their schedule.
The process of managing appointments is very straightforward. The client can choose the day and time that is available based on the type of appointment they are booking. In the case shown here, for Pearl's, it is based on the type of cleaning service, and appointments are shown with technicians that are available for the amount of time that type of appointment requires.
Updates
The Updates page is for all communication from the technician to the client. Here, the client can view all information from the last appointment, and directly chat with technicians or other employees. This level of communication is hard to come by in most service industries, so prioritizing a high level of customer service is bound to increase word-of-mouth marketing, good reviews, and more customer loyalty.
Profile
Your account information should never be hidden from you. By allowing the client to see and edit all profile information, from contact to billing, creates less friction with a technician and decreases the chances of miscommunication about contracts and billing.
CONCLUSION
Pearl’s Pool Service & Repairs is a service-based business that has its client's best interest. By trusting and allowing technology to shift their workflow, they are saving precious time. Throughout this project, there were challenges that were daunting, and extremely tedious (as many prototyping projects are). In the future, this project can expand to show the business side of the product, and allow the users to customize the dashboard to show the only information that interests them. The design execution was successful in resolving the complications that arise with miscommunication, appointments, and staying up to date with service providers.
PROTOTYPES
See the full prototype here.