Staff Me Up

Launch new iOS mobile app

Role Sole UX/UI Designer
Timeline 2023 - 2024
Online Tools Figma, FigJam, Confluence, RoadMap

Overview

Staff Me Up is a leading platform in the TV and film industry. The platform has been a tried and true platform for media production professionals since 2003, connecting freelancers to job posters. To enhance more convenient user experiences and engagement, our team worked on the development of Staff Me Up’s iOS mobile application.

The Staff Me Up app built a suite of features to maximize user efficiency and user convenience. The app is designed to connect freelancers with the best opportunities. We built out the app in two phases: Phase 1 (MVP) and Phase 2. With the MVP launch, we wanted to ensure that we were delivering the basic but also essential functionalities that would benefit our already existing users. I had to work within the iOS Human Interface Guidelines to build out our new mobile application.

Objectives

1. Increase User Accessibility: Enable users to access Staff Me Up's services conveniently on their iOS devices.

2. Enhance User Experience: Provide a seamless and intuitive interface tailored for mobile users, improving overall satisfaction and engagement.

User Flows (Phase 1)

Our main user base, freelancers browse our website to apply to jobs and this was the main functionality that we needed to build out for Phase 1.

Initial Prototypes

After multiple iterations of low and mid fidelity frames, I moved on to creating some high fidelity frames. To test these flows, we did some initial internal user testing to see how the user experience would be like for new users. We had our users go through 5 flows and noted their reactions. The 5 flows that we tested:

1. Forget password flow

2. Email log in flow

3. Browsing for a job flow

4. Searching and filtering for specific jobs flow

5. Slide out menu flow

Some key takeaways from this experience were:

The forget password flow was not very intuitive. There were no clear exits for users once they enter their email addresses for a password reset email. We needed to make sure that the flow have clear exits for users.
The filters were too complex and were confusing. None of the filters had any helper text or indicator of the maximum selections allowed. We needed to add more visual cues to let users know how to use the filters

Final Screens and Key Takeaways

As the sole designer for this project, it was extremely rewarding to see this project come to life. I also worked on creating the app store screenshot designs for Staff Me Up (as shown here)! The app has progressed to Phase 3 and more phases will continue to roll out as we build out more functionality and needs of our freelancers.

We were short on resources and time, and this led to some challenges along the way. There were some design library changes mid project, resourcing changes mid project, some design limitations as we had to reuse and recycle some mobile components that our developers had build for our sister application, and more. Nonetheless, I learned a lot and had a lot of fun working on this project. I got to hear some real time user feedback and grow from those learnings. And working on this project reignited my love for working on mobile apps.

Phase 2

Adding to the scope, we wanted to build out the key features that would enhance the mobile user’s experience. We wanted to ensure that we build the most important tools for our users inside the app.

We pushed out Work Alerts during this phase, as push notifications are extremely important. Push notifications play a huge role in increasing user engagement and retention and we wanted to make sure we really nailed these flows down. With that, we also built out the In-App chat features, which would also send out push notifications. We also continued to build on more features and to create a more complete experience for our users so they don’t have to rely on their computer to make essential updates. Better utility will drive better engagement and satisfaction.