Gig Economy app

Up & Go

www.upango.coop

2016 - Present

Product Designer

• Rapid prototyping
• User testing
• Wireframing
• UI design
• Brand management

The goal was to unite various cleaning cooperatives with distinct services onto a single platform to boost new business. As co-lead of the product team, I was tasked with creating a seamless experience that rivaled leading on-demand services (e.g., Handy, TaskRabbit) while honoring cooperative ethics.

CONTEXT

With the rise of on-demand apps, cleaning businesses in NYC—often immigrant, women owned co-ops—were falling behind. I designed Coopify, a proof of concept for a Brooklyn community organization, Center for Family Life. Together with my agency, CoLab, we secured Robin Hood Foundation funding to take it further. Up & Go is the result.

The first Coopify proof of concept landing page

PROTOYPE THINKING PROCESS

My team and I got trained up on Tom Chi's Prototype Thinking program, which equipped us with a methodology for testing our assumptions about user needs and app interactions.

Paper prototypes

We created paper prototypes exploring as many flows and screens as we could in the few hours before testing. I turned the sketches into digital wireframes using Sketch and InVision.

Prototype screens from InVision (RIP)

Early questions were big and broad:

Will people choose a worker-owned business due to the ethical standards, higher quality, and greater accountability?
Do users prefer selecting a cleaner or being assigned one?
Is there a demand for immediate service bookings versus future appointments?

USER TESTING

After analyzing the sessions, we concluded that testers found it compelling and identified a genuine market for the product. However the value proposition was not obvious to most.

Despite positive results, challenges remained. Communicating value took time. The naming and branding process that came next would accelerate this greatly.

KEY LEARNING

I learned the difference between testing a product in the concept phase versus an existing product that has a logic and an experience that can be built upon.

It was also educational to see how once there was a cohesive brand look and feel, with some professional images, how the user feedback shifted to iteration on how quick to make the booking flow. Trust was built by asking for some details, but not too many.
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BRANDING

UI evolution

Coopify was a placeholder name. With the continuing support of the Robinhood Foundation, a studio know for its iconic NYC brand work, Alfalfa Studio was brought in to help the coops find a new name and a brand.

I was invited to participate in the brand workshops. I love branding. I have done branding projects, and I manage my agencies branding. I was excited to take part and learn from another creative teams process.

The name and identity concept were strong, however it was a lean engagement, and the guidelines did not include much with digital product in mind. It was on me to make it work.

Screens for subscription testing

Over the next couple years, as we did more testing sessions, I was able to explore ways to elevate the look and feel alongside new features like subscriptions and commercial work requests.
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Context Prototype Thinking User Testing
Key Learning
Branding
The Result