Born out of a vision to help distressed venues create revenue from un-utilised spaces, today Hire Space lists over 2,500 venues across the UK with new listings been added every week. Today, Hirespace is the UK's largest venue market website.
THE MOTIVATION
TO ENSURE CONTACT INFORMATION FOR VENUES IS ALWAYS UP TO DATE
As a market maker, Hire Space relies on the ability to bring together those looking to rent a space with those looking to rent out those spaces. Timely responses to enquiries is crucial to business success. In order to achieve this, it is important to maintain venue profiles updated with relevant contact information and ensure enquiries are sent to those who can reply to them.
Hire Space also needs to know who is the relevant contact for invoicing and marketing as not all venue managers would deal with this side of the business. In order to achieve this, we were asked to overhaul the "My accounts" section of the venue profile page.
THE CHALLENGE
NARROWING DOWN AND PINPOINTING THE PROBLEM
Hire Space's current platform allows users to add multiple contacts for a venue profile as well as editing login details in their "My accounts" page.
Understanding user’s motivations and behaviours was necessary to learn how were venues interacting with the platform and why were they not using this page to update their contact information and create multiple users. This knowledge was essential to be able design a product that would address both the venues’ and the business's needs.
THE APPROACH
MY ROLE
I collaborated with three UX designers. Together, we worked on end to end UX design processes and strategy to place the users' needs at the centre of product as well as to achieve the business goals.
RESEARCH AND COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I carried out industry research and competitive analysis to better understand the context in which Hire Space operates.
USER RESEARCH
We sent out a survey to help us learn about venues and qualify individuals for further interviews. We then performed task analysis, user journeys as well developing personas to represent our findings and guide the design process.
DISCOVERY AND INSIGHTS
We worked together to translate our research into features for a product that would best address the needs and goals of the users. We used affinity mapping and feature prioritisation to ensure the needs of both our users and Hire Space were addressed by the final design.
EXPERIENCE STRATEGY AND VISION
Using our research we created a design that would make updating a profile a very simple and straight forward task. Making this process efficient will free up time for other tasks the user regards as priority. Ensuring this is easily done and that the system red flags inactive accounts will also help Hire Space contact those venues that have low levels of activity and update their records.
PLANNING AND SCOPE DEFINITION
Working closely with Hire Space we communicated research findings to be able to define the final product into a design that brings into alignment Hire Space's goals with those of their users so as to ensure the synergy of the relationship amongst both parties.
IDEATION, VALIDATION AND DESIGN EXECUTION
We made paper wireframes and tested these before creating a low fidelity prototype for further testing. After this we executed the high fidelity prototype of the design solution.
LEADERSHIP
I continuously liaised with Hire Space and presented our research ensuring their involvement throughout the project's life cycle and gained buy-in up to final presentation of design solution.
RESEARCH AND COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
IT IS A COMPETITIVE MARKET
Hire Space operates in a competitive market with new entrants constantly joining in. The number of competitors is vast with each service provider offering different features to both venue seekers and the venues themselves. In this competitive landscape maintaining a competitive advantage as a market maker is crucial.
It was necessary for us to understand the context in which Hire Space exists, from its early beginnings in 2012 to the present. We wanted to learn about the industry, the competitors as well as the venues' and venue seekers' behaviour.
We found venues will advertise through many different websites as long as their budget permits.
This is only a list of the main competitors today, we have included Airbnb as an indirect competitors as, today, it represents the benchmark to be achieved in this kind of service:
USER RESEARCH
THE SURVEY
We sent out a survey to venues across the UK. This allowed us to better understand them and to verify some initial information as well as qualifying people for further interviews. We also interviewed venue managers to learn about their goals and pain points in achieving these goals.
THE INTERVIEWS
From the interviews we were able to distinguish two distinct groups, venues who currently use Hire Space as their main marketing platform, and those who have not been able to see the benefits this market place has to offer.
We were also able to learn what they like, dislike and what they are looking for. We were able to identify what is really important to them and how do they chose to market their venues and why.
DISCOVERY AND INSIGHTS
CONTINOUS COMMUNICATION IS KEY
We were initially presented with a hypothesis as to why would venues not keep their profiles up to date, However this was not supported by research.
We found that the most important thing for enue managers is to ensure their venue is booked and to remove the uncertainty form this part of the venue management process. In order to do this, they will list their venue with as many platforms and marketing channels as their budget permits.
Continuous communication and interaction are therefore important to ensure the continuity of the relationship with a venue manager and the venue itself, even after different team members have moved on.
In such a competitive context, with many service providers competing for the attention of venue managers, it is those service who can ensure bookings that would be prioritised.
From the two groups we identified, those who experience Hire Space as the best listing platform and those who are not seeing the benefits of their listed profile, it was the second group we needed to focus on as as we believe they are at most risk of eventually abandoning their profiles.
EXPERIENCE STRATEGY AND VISION
ENCOURAGE ENGAGEMENT
We set to work on creating a profile that would allow venues to see in a tangible way the effect their profile Hire Space can have on generating bookings. We created a dashboard that provides venue analytics that informs the number of visitors to their page, as well as allowing profile managers to add and edit team members and see their inquiries' progress. All information relating to a venue can be easily accessed and edited freeing up time from admin
THE FINAL DESIGN
HOW WE GOT THERE
The biggest challenge we encountered was to reconcile the experiences of the venues with that of our client and to really understand the conceptual models of both parties to deliver a design solution that would successfully respond to all stake holders' needs.
OUR PERSONAS
USER FLOW - RESPONDING TO ENQUIRIES
USER JOURNEYS - ASSESSING OUR USERS' EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
FEATURE ANALYSIS AND PRIORITISATION
Using our research we carried out feature analysis and affinity mapping in order to bring to the forefront the features that would best respond to the needs of the users and our client and be able to bring these into alignment in the final design.
After this, we did a feature prioritisation analysis to ensure the final product was relevant to the goals of all stake holders and within the scope of the brief, while also keeping the design simple and usable for the diverse users of hirespace.com.
DESIGN AND IDEATION
With our users needs in mind, we started the ideation process and held a design studio session with Hire Space. This really helped us visualise solutions that responded to the different needs of users and stake holders.
It was clear we needed to create a system that will allow the user to load all needed information easily while also prompting them to provide all the information required from the outset while creating as little friction as possible.
We knew that the venue's goals was to generate bookings. Once they had set up a profile for their venue they were not expecting to have to do much work on the Hire Space platform, so we needed to provide a solution that will mean users would not have to think about providing information at a later stage as this is perceived as unnecessary admin and they would not think about it unless prompted by a problem in the system.
It was also necessary to make the option to add or remove team members readily available for users so they could do this with minimum effort and without having to actively look for this feature.
We started paper prototypes that we used for initial testing.
We also designed a new sign up form that asks for company information to be provided as opposed to personal information.
There was concern about the use of the term "company". This is important for Hire Space as not all venues listed on there are businesses. However, this was not an issue for users during testing.
WHAT I LEARNT
THINK ABOUT THE USER'S GOALS FIRST
Business goals are often different from those of the users themselves, and this is most obvious when the users have their own business operating under different constraints and different goals than our own.
In order to best provide a service for our users, we sometimes need them to provide us with information. The best way to ensure we are able to get that information we need to understand their behaviour and look at their side of the equation first.
Technology has changed how we behave and interact with one another, but business is still about relationships, how we manage and cultivate those relationships will determine success.