Spacious was a member-based coworking solution in NYC and SF. We partnered with restaurants and other third parties to make their spaces available to work out of during the hours they would have otherwise been sitting empty.
A year and a half into my time as Director of Product Design, we had launched new and responsive web experiences for space-finding, onboarding and membership management.
But the web-based experience was limited in solving for certain technological and business problems.
Friction
01 Imprecise map experience 02 Poor lines of communication
The web based experience couldn't reliably locate you.
The web map relied on a user's IP address to locate them. An IP address offers an estimation of your location, but lacks the accuracy of GPS.
Our means of communicating updates to members was broad and easy to miss.
Because we didn't own the majority of the spaces in our network, those spaces were often subject to schedule changes. Unless members checked their emails or opted into text messages for updates on the entire network of spaces, they were likely to miss important notifications.
Goal
Our immediate goal was to build a native app that would make it easier for people to find Spacious locations as they moved around the city.
Quickly launch an MVP to start learning from.
We opted to narrow our focus on a single feature: the space finding experience. This could be a tool for members and non-members alike to navigate the Spacious network and understand its breadth.
Iterate towards hero features.
Adding a Native App to our product suite would greatly enhance our ability to have more personalized, timely communication with our members, so push notifications was intended as close follow.
Team
CTO, Engineering & Product
The team was comprised of our CTO, who partnered with our PM to determine strategy. There were also three engineers on the project. I worked in lockstep with this small team, participating in daily stand-ups, collaborating on strategy, and pairing with engineers.
My Role as Director of Product Design
As the Director of Product Design (and only designer on this project) I was researcher, UX, UI and Interaction Designer.
Location
Hours
Capacity
Interiors
List-first
Map-first
List-first
vs.
Map-first
Capacity
Location
Interiors
Hours
Discovery
01 What drives people to choose a space? 02 Hypothesis: Interiors are most important to users 03 Hypothesis: Location is most important to users 04 User interviews 05 Survey
Location
Hours
Capacity
Interiors
We were unsure what the most important driving factors were in helping people choose a space to work from.
Based on stakeholder interviews, we determined that interiors, hours, location and capacity were the four most important attributes of a space.
But we were unsure how users ranked them in level of importance, so we were unsure how to best structure the architecture of the experience.
List-first
One hypothesis was that interiors were the most important factor, and we should therefore anchor the experience around a list-view.
This approach would allow users to easily browse paginated photos of all spaces directly from the list, and would also highlight the aesthetic quality of the spaces in our network.
The map view would be secondary.
Map-first
The second hypothesis was that location was the most important factor, and we should therefore anchor the experience around a map-view.
This approach would give users an immediate sense of the spaces nearest them, and would also highlight the breadth of our network.
The list view would be secondary.
List-first
vs.
Map-first
So I asked our members what they thought.
I sat with 20 Spacious members and asked them to navigate two prototypes (list first vs map first) and gathered insights around preferences while also looking to identify any usability issues.
They almost unanimously preferred a map-first approach because it would help them tap into one of their main reasons for joining Spacious: access to the entire network and the ability to freely move around the city.
Capacity
Location
Interiors
Hours
We also released a survey to members.
Our entire member base was invited to rank the space attributes in order of importance to them.
~50 members responded, ranking location as their top priority, followed by hours, capacity and interiors.
Design: Apply learnings
After conducting the user interviews and survey, I knew to ground the experience around the map view. But I also got more clarity around how important hours and capacity are to our members. So I wanted the app's map to be content and capability rich, granting users speedy and clear answers to their questions around locations, hours and capacity.
01 Location pins that also display hours 02 Ability to view space schedules directly from the map 03 Easy access to valuable filters
Location pins that also display hours.
Many of our spaces closed at 5, which was an issue for members who wanted to work later. So I designed our pins to not only serve at location finders, but also as schedule indicators.
Ability to view space schedules directly from the map.
I wanted to avoid forcing users to tap in and out of space detail pages to access complete space schedules.
Easy access to the most valuable filters.
Hours and capacity were two top ranking factors in determining where our members wanted to work, so I wanted to provide easy access to filter by those parameters, without having to open the filter drawer.
We launched versions of the app in iOS and Android in 2019.
The intention was to test our initial versions of the app and continue to iterate and introduce features. However, Spacious was acquired shortly thereafter.
As a design leader at a small and fast-moving startup, I paired with the CTO and CPO to determine strategy. I also worked closely with my engineering partners, so that I always had a grasp of our capabilities and they maintained a clear sense of our roadmap.
Overview
Spacious provided a membership based co-working solution to people in New York and San Francisco. We partnered with high-end restaurants to make their spaces available to work out of during the daytime hours when they would have otherwise been sitting empty. The company was acquired by WeWork in 2019.
Designed all end-to-end experiences
I joined Spacious as Director of Product Design in 2017, just after they raised their seed round. The web experiences that existed when I joined were elementary and often arduous. So we hit the ground running and within a year, launched new and responsive web experiences for space-finding, onboarding and membership management. A close follow was the design and launch of our native app.
Research
I interviewed members regularly and I designed our experiences with their needs at the forefront.
Leadership
I managed a team of contract designers, who designed our marketing material. I also managed and mentored our in-house designer who was just beginning her career in design.
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