Neighborly Consumer App

My Role
Lead Product Designer

Services Provided
User Research, UX/UI Design, Prototype Testing

Industry
B2C, Home Services & Maintenance

Redesign the Neighborly native app by building a top-of-mind home services experience by simplifying how users find, book, and manage trusted professionals.

As the lead UX designer, I owned the end-to-end design process from research and ideation to high-fidelity prototypes delivering a more personalized and streamlined experience.

The existing app interface was crowded with underutilized features and lacked a clear hierarchy. Users struggled to:

• Quickly find the right service due to an overwhelming number of options.
• Efficiently find the brand they actually need.
• Confidently trust brands and their rated reviews.
• Make use of the inspiration section and sought more valuable tools.

• Simplify the experience by reducing friction across onboarding, booking, and job management to improve findability and overall usability.
• Improve discoverability and personalization by organizing services into intuitive categories and delivering tailored recommendations based on user interest.
• Build trust and long-term loyalty through transparent reviews, valuable content, special offers, and tools that enhance engagement and encourage repeat use.
• Add value to users by replacing low-impact content with more practical tools and features that support user needs.

Identify Problems

As a team, we workshopped the existing user issues that were causing friction. We spent a few minutes at the whiteboard identifying specific problems we felt needed improvement.

Collect Data

We conducted a heatmap study on the current app experience to better understand where users encounter friction.

Prioritize Features

We prioritized the most important features onto a Gartner Magic Quadrant to make informed decisions.

We gathered insights from stakeholders and current users, which revealed:

• Most users prioritized finding brands quickly to book a specific service.
• Some first-time users were weary of booking a service and trusting the brands.
• Some users felt certain sections and features were not valuable.

“The blog section is useless. I am here to find a plumber, not an inspiration for a new garden.”

“I am suspicious of reviews that only show positive reviews. They seem fake.”

“The homepage is overwhelming because it's too busy and shows a lot of brands I don't care about.”

More Personalized & Simplified UI

The homepage was redesigned by:

• Removing visual clutter by showing users only services aligned with their selected interests.
• Organizing services into clearly labeled sections.
• Established a clear hierarchy around primary actions such as brands and services.

Trust through transparency

Users questioned review authenticity and wanted more transparency. To address this, we:

• Included both the star rating and the total number of reviews to the very top of the sheet.
• Added a review carousel to quickly view multiple reviews.
• Added a photo gallery to see completed past jobs.

Adding New Features

We replaced the underused blog with higher-impact tools designed to better support users, including:

• A measurement tool for accurate price estimates.
• An online payment tool for customer invoices.
• A service technician tracker.

• Mobile users can now find specific services they want quickly without feeling confused or overwhelmed.
• Users can feel more confident when researching brands by viewing past project photos and read both good and bad reviews.
• Users can use new features to better support their needs.

Key Learnings

• Understanding user context is critical to designing experiences that feel relevant, intuitive, and valuable.

• Workshops with cross-functional teams helped refine solutions and led to stronger design outcomes.

Next Steps

• Conduct additional usability testing to validate designs and refine them based on user feedback and identified friction points.

• Partner closely with engineering to prepare designs for development and ensure a smooth handoff.