CHALLENGE
Easy access to the private working space
In Japan, the railway companies started to establish small working space boxes at the stations a few years ago. Especially because of the pandemic, people hesitate to work in open spaces like cafés, and the boxes are getting more popular.
My client got the idea for a service called "CHATBOX", for which they installed these small boxes in office buildings. My challenge was to design better usability to compete with similar services.
INTERVIEW
Identifying the use cases
I conducted user interviews to identify when target users could possibly use this service, to provide the best user experience that suits their situation.
Participants
Occupation: Sales (who go out of their office often)
Occupation: Sales (who go out of their office often)
Age: 25-40
Number: 3
Main Questions
・When do you use the working space outside your office? Or when could you possibly use it?
・When do you use the working space outside your office? Or when could you possibly use it?
・How do you try to find a place like that?
・What's an important factor in this context?
From the interviews, I could identify three main use cases of the product and what is the preferable user experience in each situation.
STORYBOARD
Visualizing search and check-in scenario and explore suitable UI
To make an agreement with all stakeholders about the basic UX strategy, I created a storyboard based on the information we got from the user interviews.
The basic idea is to provide users with easy and fast processes which suit their use cases. Especially I focused on the search process and check-in process because there are many UI possibilities that make a big difference.
PROTOTYPING
Testing ideas to find the easy and simple UI
I made some UI patterns on each process and tested them with users. Since the service charges a fee every minute, how users select the time was an important aspect of UI.
At the end, many people had difficulties choosing the best option from different patterns because there were small differences. We decided to keep all the UI consistent.
Ex1: search filter
Tested the placement and interface of the filter options to search an available CHATBOX
Ex2: Select timespan
When the user checks in to CHATBOX ,
A: select how long they want to use it
B: select until when they want to use it
Ex3: Extend timespan
When the user is in a CHATBOX and extends the time by
A: type how much longer they want to use it
B: select until when they want to use it
C: push a button to add more time
VISUAL DESIGN
Simple and clean tone
Based on the logo the client already had, I designed a simple and clean UI for business use. Everything is kept very bright and clean, using their main color only to emphasize important elements.
