BABYHOP
A web based solution for a peer-to-peer marketplace offering baby gear rentals for traveling families.
Overview
BabyHop, based in Toulouse, France is a peer-to-peer marketplace offering baby gear rentals for traveling families. BabyHop’s business model is built on a peer-to-peer platform to invoke a sense of community to help parents in need of baby gear.
Our team was tasked with designing improvements to BabyHop’s existing web platform and validating expansion to the United States. Our focus was to improve the logistics of providing baby gear to users and improve overall communication.
Company BabyHop
Role UX/UI Design, Research
Platform Desktop
Timeline 4 Weeks
Tools Sketch, InVision
Team UX Designers, UX Manager
Research
Researching the competitive landscape, we provided a competitive analysis on other marketplace platforms to understand what was, and what wasn’t working.
The current state of BabyHop utilized Sharetribe FLEX, a solution for building online marketplaces for rentals, services, and events. We researched Sharetribe FLEX to understand if it was the best tool for our client to use. We uncovered insights on limitations, restrictions, and found that Sharetribe FLEX had its limitations and constraints.
SHARETRIBE FLEX CONSTRAINTS
Inability to rent multiple items
Purchase transactions were limited to one purchase
Item search was not supported
SMS alerts were unavailable
Option to save credit card payment information not available
A scenario which we found common with users of BabyHop was that it was not possible to rent multiple items. Most users needed to rent more than one item, and when checking out could only input their payment information for one item at a time.
Our research helped us to understand system + platform constraints, the competitive landscape, and conducting interviews helped us uncover user frustrations.
User Interviews
Through user interviews, we were able to identify two user types, which consisted of Renters and Providers. After conducting our initial user interviews we were able to highlight the goals and frustrations of both types.
Insight from conducting user interviews proved that there was a lack of communication between Renters and Providers, which in turn made it difficult for them to facilitate the logistics of baby gear rentals. Below you can view the goals and frustrations of each type.
Personas
Problem Statement
Parents traveling with infants, need a way to manage baby gear, because overpacking creates negative logistical consequences that adds stress when traveling.
Design Principles
Story Driven
Sharing a narrative that displays BabyHop in a warm and welcoming way.
Community Centered
Curating a feeling of unity between renters, providers, and BabyHop.
Educational
Creating a sense of guidance to make informed decisions about travel needs.
Validating Expansion
After discovering that our main problems were focused around the functionality capabilities of the current site, a lack of communication, and logistics of renting gear between renters and providers, we consulted our findings with our client about validating expansion to the U.S.
We gave our client two options which outlined the positive and negatives of each option.
OPTION 1
Consisted of a robust version 2.0, improved user experience, and greater possibility of increased conversion rates. The negative would be a delayed expansion to the United States.
OPTION 2
Scaling first which would include more research documentation on U.S. users, alternative platforms and business models. The negative would be a delayed product to market.
Ideation
After receiving client buy-in on Option 1, we started to conceptualize our ideas . We had two rounds of concepts, and found that our first round consisted of ideas that were too broad for us to prioritize. Most importantly many of the users we testing our first round of concepts with did not respond well, and we were unable to any confident design decisions to move forward. Examples included a baby stroller rental service and lockers to drop off baby gear. We iterated on our concepts, and agreed to move forward on concepts which aligned more closely to improving and optimizing the current state of BabyHop.
From our second round of testing our concepts with users we were able to prioritize user feedback to actionable insights. These insights from users included:
• SMS notifications
• Item based search results over provider based search results
• Clear instructions on how to rent and provide baby gear items
• Tracking account completion
• Ability to rent all products needed from one provider if possible
• Having delivery of baby gear as an option
Solution + Final Product
CREATING AN ACCOUNT
We included a detailed profile creation flow and account setup for providers to ensure successful transactions. We also consolidated and improved the account set up flow by reducing the number of steps it previously took to set up an account. Another process of the account setup which we included was the functionality to include SMS alerts. Sharetribe, the platform which the current state of BabyHop was built on did not allow SMS integration. However, it was on their roadmap and we decided to include it in our solution.
ITEM SEARCH
We added information and details for each item listing. These pages included information regarding fees, available delivery times, and provider ratings. We simplified the layout by eliminating cognitive load, made these pages more visually appealing and simpler to understand the provided information. We also suggested the use of filters to help narrow down and simplify searching for desired items. Previously users were only able to search items by location only.
CART CHECKOUT
It was not possible because of backend constraints to check out multiple items in one transaction. Each item had to be rented separately, which then provided the user with a transaction through email for each separate item.
We designed and implemented a way to checkout multiple items at once, enabling the ability to rent multiple items from multiple providers in one transaction. We added a shopping cart icon and front end experience to simplify the checkout process. We also added an option to save payment information to alleviate previous frustrations of having to enter their payment information multiple times.
Final Thoughts
When most people think design, rarely do they think about the business constraints of a company. It was challenging to outline a strategy given our timeline and Sharetribe platform constraints. It’s important as designers to be an advocate for the user, but it is also important to understand the business needs. There were multiple platform constraints, but our team was able to provide a lot of actionable recommendations to the business overall. This project pushed me to look at the bigger picture and to understand what could be implemented to improve the business overall, ways to consult and communicate with our client, and present our design recommendations. Expanding to the U.S. market proved to be feasible in the future, but there were many necessary steps that would have to be taken to get BabyHop to that point. For the future, building a mobile application makes sense, in that it could aid traveling users on the move. It could potentially ease user frustrations finding providers at their destinations. From a business perspective implementing incentive to deliver items could also help with logistical frustrations. Designing a desktop solution for our client proved to be challenging and a valuable learning experience. We were able to provide an abundance of suggestions and recommendations.