(2022)
Ground Control
Daddy, chill. We've Got Your Lawn Under Control.
Perspective
Ground Control is a comprehensive lawn care and property maintenance scheduling application, tailored for busy individuals who prioritize efficient, convenient, and professional yard services. This app has been developed as a native solution for both iOS and Android platforms, ensuring a seamless user experience across devices.
Challenge
Despite the abundance of lawn care apps available, few offer a seamless experience from start to finish. Many apps require users to sign up before revealing the services they provide, while others feature overly complex and confusing user interfaces. Some force users to navigate lengthy lists or subject them to unnecessary questionnaires.
For customers willing to invest in property maintenance, a simple, efficient, and enjoyable experience is highly valued. Ground Control is designed to provide a clearer, more intuitive, and faster solution than existing alternatives.
Solution
Users who download Ground Control will experience seamless navigation through an organized and comprehensive selection of local services. With a user-friendly interface, they can easily enter their address, select preferred date and time, and choose the services they need—without the frustration of lengthy onboarding or confusing options.
Viewing past and upcoming services, adding new requests, rescheduling, and messaging providers are all just a tap away. Users can also organize their favorite services into a list, which can be shared with others. This streamlined app delivers what competitors lack: confidence that their property maintenance needs are efficiently managed.
User Research Brief
The target audience for lawn care apps includes property owners with limited time seeking on-demand yard care, individuals who lack personal lawn care equipment, senior citizens and people with disabilities who are unable to operate machinery, as well as those who are inexperienced with lawn care.
Competitive Analysis
Several lawn care apps, such as "Lawn Guru" and "My Lawn," offer more intuitive layouts and streamlined navigation. I leveraged the most effective features from these platforms, including a quick navigation bar and breadcrumb navigation.
These apps also include gimmicky features that tend to waste users' time. For instance, prompting users to describe their lawn care goals using preselected phrases may serve marketing purposes under the guise of a fun exercise, but it ultimately does not help users achieve their objectives.
Ground Control, on the other hand, prioritizes efficiency by minimizing distractions and facilitating quick connections with service providers. Based on user feedback, future iterations may incorporate more personalized features, but this will never come at the cost of maintaining fast and streamlined service.
Navigation Sequence
Mid-Fidelity Prototypes
Usability Assessment
Following the creation of initial sketches, several features were incorporated to enhance the user experience, including options such as guest sign-in, a password recovery link, supplemental service inquiries, the ability to add multiple properties under a single account, a log-out function, and scrollbars for navigating longer lists.
One of the primary usability challenges was the original dark grass background, which compromised text readability. To address this, the background was replaced with a cleaner, more neutral design, accompanied by redesigned navigation cards and an updated color scheme.
Too dark
Difficult to focus
Poor navigation
Eye strain
Brighter
Enhanced readability
Intuitive navigation
No headaches
Before
After
Brand Conceptualization
Typography
Palette Composition
Imagery
Iconography
Final Showcase
Account Creation & Sign-On
Navigation Toolbar
Choosing & Scheduling a Service
User Feedback
Provider Messaging
Native App for Android
Critical Insights
Future Iterations
Establishing strong user trust in a minimum viable product (MVP) is the primary objective. Unnecessary features and overly complex user flows were misaligned with the needs of most potential users. Continuously gathering real-world feedback through testing is critical for refining the user experience. This iterative process ensures ongoing improvements while maintaining a focus on the core functions.
Some potential paths for future iterations include incorporating a more personalized user profile, providing simple advice to help users maintain their yard between appointments, introducing a haptic feedback interface, and adopting a more subdued color palette.
Lawn Guru prominently displayed the most popular services at the top of the screen, which inspired the inclusion of a service favoriting option, allowing users to easily access their preferred services in the future.
My Lawn incorporated an estimate of yard size for pricing purposes. However, this estimation relied on Google Maps, which was occasionally inaccurate. As a result, this feature was not included in Ground Control.
iPhone Native App Set
Android Native App Set
Ground Control was my first successful endeavor in creating an app from start to finish. Included to show evolution in style, content, and color theory.