Lavanda
·
Feb 2018 - Apr 2018
Lavanda
As sole designer, shaping Lavanda's mobile working experience for cleaners, drivers and other on-the-go workers, from flow maps and sketches to detailed UI.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
Feb 2018 - Apr 2018
Team
Sole designer, with the CPO and development team
Platform
iOS / Android
Overview
A working app for people on the move
Lavanda combines technology with operational support for short-term rentals and hospitality, for a growing number of real estate and hospitality companies. I joined as the sole designer on a private app for Lavanda's workforce of cleaners, drivers and other on-the-go workers, helping them find and schedule work, see what each assignment involved and report their progress. I owned the design end to end, from process and flow mapping through sketches and wireframes to detailed UI, working directly with Lavanda's CPO and development team.
Sole designer
UX and UI end to end, from flow mapping and sketches to detailed screens
One worker journey
The day's assignments, on-site checklists and progress reporting in one flow
Built-in recognition
Hero Points designed in alongside pay and progress
Challenge
Making a working day clear on the move
Lavanda's workers were on the move all day, between properties, keys and tasks, often with little time between jobs. They needed to know where to go next, what the job involved and what it paid, work through it step by step, and report problems as they happened. Around that core, the app also had to handle bookings, availability, rota changes, holidays and earnings, without burying the day's work under administration.
How do you turn a varied set of operational tasks into one clear mobile journey someone can follow in the moment?
Approach
One worker journey, from today's job to completion
Mapping the work
I started by mapping the whole operation: the dashboard, flexible tasks, availability, rota, holiday requests, key scanning and account basics. Seeing it as one map made clear which parts formed the daily core and which were supporting administration, and that shaped the app’s structure. The day’s work had to come first; everything else could sit behind it.
Key screens mapped across the whole operation: dashboard, flexible tasks, availability, rota, holidays and key scanning.
Making work clear in the moment
The core journey brings together a worker’s day, individual jobs and the steps needed to complete them. A Today view shows the day’s assignments. Job details show the location, pay and Hero Points, with an “I’ve arrived” action that checks the worker in at the property and starts the job. Task checklists, such as an owner-return clean, guide the work, and a way to report a problem stays within reach throughout, ending in a clear completion state.
Each screen answers the question the worker has at that moment: where next, what’s involved, what’s left, and am I done.
The Today view, a job with its “I’ve arrived” action, and the task checklist.
From sketches to detailed screens
The work moved from pencil sketches and wireframes into detailed mobile screens, with feedback from Lavanda’s CPO and the development team throughout. Sketching let me test the structure of the journey quickly before committing to detail, and working directly with the developers kept the designs grounded in what the team could build.
Left Pencil sketches in progress: where the flows started. Right The sketched daily task journey.
Left The same journey as wireframes. Right Sketch, wireframe and detailed UI side by side.
Scheduling around the work
Alongside the task flows, I designed screens for bookings, availability, rota changes across time zones, and earnings. Finding and changing available sessions became its own clear flow, so managing the week never got in the way of doing the day’s work.
Bookings, rota and availability across time zones.
Booking a session, in motion (video).
Motivation and progress
Lavanda’s CPO wanted an element of gamification, and together we devised Hero Points. The open question was how much weight they should carry. They began as a headline feature, and I argued for them to support the work rather than drive it: people open the app to do their jobs, not to collect points, so recognition should be a visible benefit of good work, never the reason to act. I designed Hero Points alongside pay and task progress, so recognition sits next to the work that earns it.
Outcome
A complete worker experience, designed end to end
As the sole designer, I delivered the complete worker experience: the daily task journey from assignment to completion, scheduling and availability, earnings and recognition, and the flow map that tied them together, taken from sketches and wireframes to detailed mobile UI with Lavanda's CPO and development team.
The daily journey
Today, job detail, arrival, checklists, problem reporting and completion.
Scheduling
Bookings, availability, rota changes and earnings in their own clear flows.
Recognition
Hero Points designed into the work, beside pay and progress.
Sole design ownership
UX and UI end to end, from the flow map and sketches to detailed screens.
Reflection
Design for the moment, not the menu
Operational apps tend to mirror the organisation behind them: a menu of everything the business does. The people using them need the opposite, the one thing that matters right now. Mapping the whole operation, then designing around one person and the action they're trying to take, is how I approach any operational product.
