product design
Role
Product Designer
team
Product Manager
Product Designer
Engineer
External Dev Team
Product
Psychic Cloud Mobile App
time
2023 Q2-Q3
Psychic Cloud is a social platform connecting users with psychics for readings. Initially, users could only call psychics when they were online, leading to frustration and missed opportunities. To address this, we introduced a Schedule & Appointment feature, maximizing psychics' availability, transforming the experience for both psychics and users, and boosting revenue.
While the Schedule & Appointment feature might seem simple, it presents challenges due to specific business requirements.
To understand the landscape, I examined competitors offering similar appointment services to see how they manage their scheduling and appointment processes.
I interviewed our contracted psychics to understand their call-handling habits.
In the initial design, I applied a selection wheel for users to freely pick the Start and End Time to meet business requirements. However, this approach presented several problems:
When psychics' schedules are irregular, asking users to select any time from this irregular schedule can be overwhelming.
Development complexity increases as the system must check appointment times against psychic availability without a clear pattern.
Allowing users to set start and end times freely can create high cognitive load due to endless options.
Different user preferences for appointment times can lead to more idle time in psychics' schedules.
I proposed a new design to address the issues from iteration #1:
To balance flexibility and structure, I created fixed-duration options based on user data. The system would generate time slots based on the selected duration, easing the burden on users and developers.
Options ranged from 15 minutes to 2 hours, with intervals of 15 minutes. The team decided to deploy this approach for the MVP and refine it based on user feedback.
The final design included the addition of timezones to help users choose appointment times confidently. Payment and confirmation were linked to the original payment mechanism but were not demonstrated in the prototype.
From the Psychic tab, users browse and select psychics who they feel are the best fit, then book appointments directly from the psychic's profile.
Offering flexible duration options while maintaining control over the psychic's schedule, and easing development challenges.
Included a Time Zone selection at the bottom for users to consult when picking their appointment time, useful for travelers or those with specific scheduling needs.
The team's mantra was "Break things, move fast." We swiftly handed over the design to development to gather data from users and psychics. To evaluate the success and impact of the new appointment feature, I would monitor the following metrics:
Business
USERS