Build Construction Apps from discovery to MLP

A B2B platform focused on construction service where the entire project team from each foreman or contractor to professional builders comes together to collaborate and share information in one platform with encrypted messaging feature.

Gravel - Android, iOS

Build for a contractor or project manager that connects them to professional builders with various skills.

Dulur - Android, iOS

Build for construction workers to get job daily, it connects them to a contractor or project manager to work together.

Admin Dashboard

For business operations, to track active users workers and owners, revenue, performance, growth metrics, invoice, etc.

Overview

Product Vision

Gravel is dedicated to provide field management solution for construction teams, simplifies the process of finding professional builders, transparency in payments, and collaboration across teams and projects.

My Role

Branding

Create brand identity and its guideline based on product vision so it can be use for other design collaterals such as marketing campaigns, social media content.

UX Research & Synthesis

Conducted and planned for user interviews with various of research method according to business objective and synthesised findings into actionable deliverables.

Ideation & Prototype

Brainstorm and gather all information from research, ideated features and concepts, dot voting for prioritisation, and define list of features that need to be develop for improvement or iteration. Lastly, created low or mid-fidelity prototype for usability test.

Dulur is dedicated for construction workers aiming to improve their quality of life by providing them job daily, professional training, and guaranteed payment.

Usability Test & Implementation

Examine and observe selected participants after prepare prototype with interaction. Analyse results using maze analytics and iterate the designs to high-fidelity.

Design System (Style-guide)

Build components library based on brand identity and product vision. Keep improving and maintain it to ensure consistency across every touch-point that deliver brand experiences.

Branding Kickoff

The initial "G" represent Gravel combine in a form of hammer which is a part of essential tools for every builder needs. It was designed to be timeless and memorable as it is simple and recognizable.

The reason our founder used "Gravel" for the company's name and brand is because it is tiny bits of debris that some people see as nothing more than rocks trampled and crushed in the street. We view them as elements which used to build the homes you lived in, offices, temples, statues, and towers that you admire, and most importantly, build the country you love.

Community badge

Dulur is a Javanese word which means kin or relatives. It has been mainly used to emphasize the close relationship between each other.

Helmet represents construction workers
Rice paddy field represents sustenance and livelihood
Seven stars represents perfection in quality
2019 is the year of establishment

The objective of community badge was to encourage unity towards each other by the fact that they are all under Gravel.

UX Research

Ethnography Research

Synthesis

Key components of field notes that need to be concerned are people's behaviour, place of observations, specific activities or words, summary of conversation, concerns, ideas, attitude and artefacts.

The whole journey need to be transcribed for reflection and key takeaways for us to gain a holistic understanding of the user group.

User Interview

Card Sorting

Synthesis

Moderated, open card sorting (user generates their own naming on categorisation and label the information group) with the qualitative short interview. Manual cards (we make card on paper with a marker and create the illustration)

We want to examine our talent preferences for grouping, labelling, and structure for our application. At the end, we can improve the labelling, grouping, and information architecture.

Ideation

Brainstorming

After we had gathered the results from research. We started our ideation process by breaking into sections started with "How Might We" method using sticky notes or FigJam with limited time given; what are the main issue, ideas, concern, and suggestion.

Attributes

Culture

Inclusive and Diverse

Target Audiences

Adults, age 18 above

Voice

Considerate, Simple, and Direct

Feeling

Honest, Friendly and Elegant

Value

Empowered and Enriching

Impact

Development of construction tech industry

Synthesis

Empathy map is to understand our user's needs by synthesise and empathise our observation from the research phase.
The user journeys and personas helped us to understand user's pain point, need, behaviour, emotional state, motivation, and goal.
From the result of user interviews, we are able to discover suggestion for features and iteration through input and critics for our product.

Prototype

Instead of mere verbal discussion, mostly we work with low or mid-fidelity prototype on paper, whiteboard, or FigJam. Key stakeholders are necessary in this state to help build ideas together. Our goals here to achieve the minimum result, so we can go for usability test to get feedbacks before proceeding to high fidelity.

Design has always been an essential aspect on every business model. I was inspired by minimalism art which offers a highly purified form of beauty. It can also be seen as representing such qualities as honesty, simplicity, and harmony.

We conducted interview to our partners - construction workers, and owners - contractors. The goals here to iterate current product (MVP) to cater better experience and gain more insights for improvement. Expected output would be:

Empathy map
User flow journey
Persona (validation from proto-persona)
Input and critic for our product
Suggestion for features

There are two main objectives in this method:

To have knowledge of our user mental model when they use our product.
To understand the way our users create, organise, structure, and arrange the group of information.

Our expectation is to compare the result of this activity with our existing information architecture on application. So we can generate quantitative and qualitative data through it and later it will be used for the next product iteration.

Before we jumped into user interview, we discussed and break down our plan into actionable chunks weekly. Once a week, we went to the construction site to observe the challenges people deal with as they interact with and struggle with their environments in order to understand their behaviour patterns through daily activities. We recorded everything from beginning to the end of the day, such as images and recordings to collect the data for analysis and documentation.

Usability Test

Contextual Inquiry

This usability test method is where participants were observed while they performed tasks given and simultaneously talk about what they were doing. This activity was conducted outside office after we already planned everything including who are the users, main objectives (Q&A), the time and place. We need to split the task before the test began and asked user's consent since this activity will be recorded.

System Usability Scale

We invited minimum 5 to 15 users with limited time given during this test. It consists 10 questions and each of the questions has their own objective. Scoring is based on a 5 point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. This measure user's perceptions regarding upcoming features, overall satisfaction and experience.

Implementation

Launch MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

At first, to validate the business idea, we started from a community group and some other site to recruit potential workers. We used messenger app as a medium for communication that has been widely used among owners and construction workers.

Gradually, after we had gathered enough resources, prioritizing essential hygiene features was challenging due to the tight timeline we had and with only few people in a team. We eventually launched our first MVP for both apps; Gravel and Dulur to test the market.

Session Recording

After mid to high fidelity prototype were created, we used it to test the interface interactions and flow with the end-users through maze. It allows us to analyse how users interact with the prototype and collect actionable insights. We make iteration design report from the test result and communicated it with product manager to understand the feasibility of the prototype and its rationale behind.

A Road to MLP (Minimum Lovable Product)

It took more than a year to achieve from viable product to minimum marketable product (MMP). It means a product must have some features that will bring immediate value to the customers such as; increase retention, maintain cost-efficient, and generate more revenue.

At this stage more features launched on both apps such as payment method, encrypted chat messenger, leave request, overtime, report, referral, and many others were created based on research that solve a user's pain point that delivered must-have functionality and bring quantifiable value back to the business.

To reach the minimum lovable product (MLP), we must firstly consider all what our users care about and their touchpoints. We strive to achieve lovability as our product matures by improving the product over time to prove that we understand their struggles and want to build a long term relationship with them. At this phase, design is not the only one need to be improved, but also the whole product experience including sales and marketing.

Before we develop the features based on hypotheses from our direct observation. We want to test our assumption and hypotheses about efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction in using our product with our metric. Hence, we modified the question based on our current state and demographic. The purpose of usability testing is:

To gather quantitative and qualitative behavioural data about product usage and its usability.
Discover design opportunity to fix the critical issue and improve its usability based on user's perspective.

Reflection

The Beauty Behind Great Challenges

We have started since Q4, 2019 with only three people in a team; product officer, product designer, and researcher. Despite throughout challenges and struggles, I learned a lot from it, especially when conduct research together, work on ideation, and build prototypes. The pace was agile, and yet sturdy. Hence, this made me understand which essential features that were necessary to build from MVP to MLP and how the business work behind it.

Establish Team With Growth Mindset

As Henry Ford said, "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success". However, in order to work together, it must begin by building trust. And it is a process, whereas a leader need to lead by example, willing to get to know each other personally, and communicate openly despite if there is any issue occurred.

To achieve this, I need to cultivate an open mind, step out of the comfort zone and learned from my mistakes which eventually push me to walk extra miles and strengthen teamwork. Most often we found idea, inspiration or even a solution to a problem when we spend quality time with each other.