Circuit Laundry App Redesign (UX Design + Writing)
As a fresher who lived in Halls alongside a thousand others, we had no option but to use the Circuit Laundry app. to do our washing. Although, there were several complaints about how buggy it was, how expensive it was e.t.c , we sucked it up and carried on.
A few months later during the lockdown, I challenged myself to redesign the app for many 18–24-year-olds in different UK universities who had poor experiences with it (including myself).
Goal 🎯: My goal was to improve the overall experience of every student who came across the app. and complete my first design project from start to finish.
Roles 👷🏾♀️: User reseacher, User Interface Designer & Product Designer
Tools ⚒️: Adobe XD
Although it was a solo project, I saw it as an opportunity to be more practical and apply the theoretical UX concepts. I also discovered amazing UX designers and useful resources that helped me tremendously throughout the lifespan of the project.
User Research
For the research phase, I carried out a survey with 42 UK university students. This was done to gain insight on their experience and clarity on the problems that I needed to focus on (there were lots!)
Perhaps due to the nature of the questions (mostly closed questions), I didn’t have enough insight to work off. Hence, I decided to collect more information through Twitter and the App store (see image below).
These were extremely useful because they were very detailed about their experience with the app.
I also asked the respondents to describe the app in three words and the most common were :
📌 Quick and easy,
📌 Outdated
📌 Expensive
📌 Problematic
As a long-term user of this app, I could totally relate with most of the responses given which made it easier to work on this project.
With this information alongside the app reviews and the tweets, I created an affinity map to synthesise the information into themes. The most common issues had to Payment, App. features and the User Interface.
User personas
To gain a realistic representation of my target audience, I used the information from my User Research to create user personas. They materialized the goals and frustrations of university students who use the Circuit Laundry app.
User Stories
From these personas, I was able to draw up user stories to provide clarity on the problems I needed to solve.
1. As a user, I want to pay the exact amount needed for a full wash so that I don’t have any outstanding balances that can not be retrieved.
2. As a user, I would like to have my payment details saved so I don’t have to waste time retyping my details every time I use the app.
3. As a user, I would like to gain access to discount codes so that the amount paid for my laundry is not very expensive.
From here, I extracted HMW (How Might We) questions that guided me throughout the redesign process.
They were:
🤔 How might we reduce the amount of money spent to use the machines?
🤔 How might we prevent students from losing money on the circuit laundry app?
🤔 How might we make the payment process much quicker and less frustrating?
🤔 How might we devise a better method that lets students know when their laundry is ready to collect?
Ideation Phase
As I drew my wireframes, I started brainstorming on different solutions to the questions above.
- Solution to HMW Question 1: How might we devise a better method that lets students know when their laundry is ready to collect?
1 & 2: This was the idea I had that will let students know when their laundry is ready to collect. By setting alerts, it would enable notifications to pop up on their phone screen when the wash is done.
In the original version, they had to open up the app and update to check whether their laundry was finished.
2. Solution to HMW Question 2: How might we make the payment process much quicker and less frustrating?
State of the original version: Paypal and debit card were the only options and you constantly had to type in your card details. The “save card” option was unavailable.
Imagine having to type in your details over and over again! 🤦🏾♀️
3. For IOS users, the idea here is that using Apple Pay would be much quicker because you don’t constantly have to type in your card details.
4. For those who would need to use Paypal or debit cards for payment, being able to save your card details would make the process faster and less frustrating.
3. Solutions to HMW Questions 3 & 4:
- How might we prevent students from losing money on the circuit laundry app?
- How might we reduce the amount of money spent to use the machines?
State of the original version(see image below): You couldn’t top up less than five pounds. This made students lose a lot of money after their first year because the remaining amount was irretrievable.
Also, there was a ‘promotions’ feature to reduce costs . However, there are never any discounts available so it was no use to the students.
5. My initial idea to deal with losing money was to determine the cost of their wash setting of choice. Hence, they are able to put in the exact amount.
However, as I worked through the project, I thought it’d be less complicated if they were just able to put in how much they needed. (That was the idea I ended up going with.)
6. I was very unsure about Circuit collaborating with companies like Unidays, student beans etc. Therefore, I thought about a solution that would be easy to understand from the user perspective and easy to implement from the business perspective. This would be the use of Circuit points.
How it would work
With Circuit points, whenever the students use the app for washing (which is mostly twice a month based on my research), they get points. Each wash would earn them 25 points . When these points accummulate to 100, they can start to pay with the points they have.
Usability test summary
To test out the functionality of the redesign, I carried out a Moderated Usability Remote Testing with 3 participants from my target audience.
I received feedback that the process was easy and straightforward. However, it needed to be more colourful and modern. So, I went back to redesign the app and the final version is below.
Reflection
In the end, it was a very challenging experience but I have learnt that the UX process is not so rigid and cookie-cut.
I realised that there were some problems I couldn’t solve as a UX designer and it depended on the company to take action. For example, one issue was how irresponsive the customer support team were.
However, I was able to solve the issues that they reported calling the team about.
As a budding UX designer, this project made me go above and beyond in my search to discover more about the industry and gain experience.
If I had to do this project again, I would do it on a bigger scale. This means collaborating with more designers and conducting user research with more students.
Now, I don’t know if this design would be adopted by the company, but I hope they take a thing or two from it. Circuit is used in most universities in the UK but students are extremely dissatisfied with the service they receive.
My only wish is that this would change.
Being a UX Writer as well, I created a voice and tone guide for Circuit. My aim was to provide guidance that would make the language simple and student-friendly. Check it out using the link below.
Thank you! :)
