Unplanned User Research

Note: I wasn’t planning on writing a blog post today. I was planning on getting some stuff done and getting on a flight. However, having been preaching to my team about the importance of storytelling in articulating our values as product designers and builders, I felt it was only right to put my money where my mouth is and tell a story about my Sunday as a user in the on-demand (ish) economy.

A Real Live User

I don’t live in a very nice apartment, most people who know me well know that. Thanks to Sarah Kessler, people who don’t know me well know that too. I’ve lived in the same HDFC co-op since a time before I founded Managed by Q, and if anything, it’s condition has degraded through the years as previous living mates left and walls disappeared through characteristically ambitious and unfinished projects of the youngest son of a carpenter.

Living the life of a mostly solitary entrepreneur in recent years, upkeep of the home has also not been a priority, but every man reaches his breaking point. For me it was an impending visit with a bank appraiser.

It was Sunday morning and I had overslept my ambitious goal of an early rise. I would be leaving to visit the Managed by Q teams in LA and SF by midday, so my time was limited. The next day the bank appraiser would be meeting a colleague of mine to assess the habitability of the apartment, and out of respect for my teammate and fear of failing the “functional kitchen and bathroom” part of the appraisal, I needed to get my apartment cleaned, as well as a broken toilet and leaking pipe fixed before I left.

As usual, I had not afforded much time to these personal tasks, so it was critical that everything went off without a hitch. The year being 2018, I had turned to the internet to produce outcomes in the real world. Embarking on my journey it had dawned on me that this was a rare opportunity to experience the perspective of a user with urgency (read: desperation) you just can’t fake.

Discovery & Booking

The story really begins on Saturday, when I booked a cleaner through Handy.

First, I was asked to commit to 6 months of recurring cleaning, when all I wanted was a one-time cleaning. I then realized the pattern was so dark that I couldn’t navigate to an option to book a one-time cleaning from the website, so I googled for a one time cleaning booking link and found it. You can access said backdoor here, if you must.

After booking the cleaning, I saw that rather than assigning one of the experienced and highly reviewed cleaners in my area that were advertised, Handy defaulted to assigning me someone who had never cleaned a home for Handy before. I understand that everyone needs their first shot, but Sunday would not be that day.

When I tried to switch to one of the available, highly reviewed cleaners in my area, I was told that I needed to download the mobile app to do so. When I downloaded the mobile app and selected a different cleaner, I was charged a $15 late change fee. Rage.

From this outsider, it would appear at some point at Handy HQ, spreadsheets had triumphed over user stories.

Despite the disappointing booking experience, my discovery problem was solved. A qualified, available, peer-reviewed service provider available within 24 hours. The product-market fit was so strong for my need in fact, I was even willing to download an app, pay a bogus fee, and incur some rage to get what I wanted.

As for the plumbing, I had intended to DIY, only to learn that every hardware store in South Williamsburg is closed on Sunday. With the clock ticking I looked to Yelp where I had previously had luck with last minute plumbing needs.

Given my time constraints, I indexed heavily on Yelp’s reported response times. In addition to my need being dire, provider responsiveness makes a big difference when everyone has homogenous, well enough reviewed pages with manicured profiles. You can’t fake responsiveness, unless you are the Uber driver who accepted my ride from the Starbucks bathroom, a story for another day.

I started calling down the list of plumbers. I knew that if I called a smaller shop, the odds were I’d be calling the principal’s cell phone and not a dispatcher, which felt like a safe bet on a Sunday. After a few calls I was talking to Victor.

While pretty much all of the problems in my life are bigger than my plumbing problems, in that moment plumbing was my world and I was feeling the heat. However, when Victor picked up the phone and confirmed his availability and willingness to head over, my blood pressure dropped.

There is no substitute for a real conversation with a qualified counterparty who is committed to solving your problem. Chat can work too, but hearing the nuance of another humans’ voice helps build context and trust faster, and Victor was my guy.

Service Experience & Payment

At about 10:50 AM I opened the Handy mobile app, preparing for my service experience. To my surprise, the cleaner, who we will call Claire, was “checked in” to my home. I took a quick look around my studio apartment to make sure I wasn’t missing something, and messaged her through the Handy app.

She was, of course, downstairs and not inside my apartment. Well designed messaging for last-mile logistics allowed me to coordinate the finer points of the experience with minimal frustration, or at least not having to call customer service — points for Handy.

Claire came up and we chatted a little as she got started. She worked at the Met during the week, but had Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off so she used Handy to make some extra cash. She told me she was obsessive about cleaning her own home and didn’t mind bringing those skills to other peoples homes for extra cash.

Even this well documented gig economy cynic has to say it sounded like a pretty good deal for everyone. Another topic for another day.

It wasn’t long after Claire had arrived and started in on her work that I was back to coordinating with Victor, who expertly leveraged iMessage in lieu of any service management application.

He asked me to send over a picture of the toilet and the pipes, critiqued my photography, and let me know that he was going to pick up the parts on his way to make it quick. There was no service request modal or form to fill out, a few pics and we were off to the races. It turns out a picture really is worth a thousand words, especially a picture of a broken toilet.

A few hours later, as agreed Victor texted me to let me know his ETA. More specifically he let me know what Google Maps was telling him, which I thought was an elegant way to both build my confidence and deflect liability in New York City traffic.

Victor arrived looking like a character from a movie about very hip plumbers. Thin, wearing athleisure, with a greasy top knot, well kept mustache, distant accent and a backpack for hauling his gear.

He was a pro, strapping on a headlamp and getting straight to work. Barely 20 minutes had passed when he called me over to show me that he not only replaced the leaking washer, he went ahead and replaced all of them since he was there. He also replaced the handle to the toilet and he upgraded the whole flushing mechanism from plastic to metal. The customer service is so good I almost forgot to calculate his hourly rate. Almost.

There was, of course, a catch. We had left the Yelp ecosystem a long time ago and there was no going back. We were going to have to figure out payments amongst ourselves. I knew the answer the question before I asked, and before long I was schlepping down Havemyer Street in the midday sun to find an ATM. An imperfect end to my otherwise delightful plumbing experience.

I returned triumphant, shocked at how well things had gone.

I met Victor outside my building and handed Victor a handful of machine-crisp twenties, confirmed that he would be remitting state, local, and federal taxes, and sent him on his way.

I bounded back up the stairs to find Claire wrapping up her cleaning. She did an excellent job and had an amazing attitude. I tipped her with one remaining twenty, and had a cliché thought about the insanity of paper money, genuinely glad that Handy would be handling the rest of the transaction.

My day as a real user under real pressure gave me rare insight into the pain that our users experience every week trying to run offices. The difference, of course, is that my failure to accomplish the tasks I faced would negatively impact only me. In the case of our users, hundreds of people are counting them, and their ability to succeed has consequences on their performance.

Lessons Learned

Because this post has been long and fraught with unnecessary detail, I’ve distilled my experiences down to a handful of lessons learned, not for the general public but for the product and design teams at Managed by Q who I’ll ask to start thinking about how we can be better today, because let’s be honest — we’ve got some work to do :)

1. Users are not stupid, they see dark patterns and it erodes their trust in your brand
2. The strength of product-market fit correlates with the amount of pain a user will endure
3. Quantitative metrics, like response time, can help otherwise homogeneous profiles stand out
4. The user’s problem is their entire universe, especially when the stakes are high
5. A qualified counter-party committing to solve your problem reduces task-related anxiety
6. Related to the above, voice is better than chat for establishing trust
7. Last mile messaging is a broadest fix for a myriad of issues in onsite service delivery
8. A picture is worth a thousand words
9. Payment is part of the experience — bad payment, bad experience
10. At the end of the day, it’s still just people showing up and doing things

PostScript

Thanks to the help of Victor and Claire, my apartment passed inspection. When I’m not writing about my apartment or starting projects that leave my home a construction zone, I’m the co-founder and CEO of Managed by Q.

For the past 4 years, my team has been working hard at building the operating system for the built world, a platform to run the real world with the reliability of software. We’re in the business of removing friction, and allowing our clients, partners, and employees to achieve their potential.

There was a lot of noise around on-demand, and now there is a lot of hype around real estate technology. Our mission and vision have remain unchanged in that time, and they won’t change anytime soon although, we have learned a ton on the road, and have lots more to learn.

We’re laser-focused on innovating how spaces are run, which means both building software and owning real world operational outcomes. We’re not a service company, we’re not a SaaS company and we’re certainly not a real estate company. We operate at the intersection of people, technology, and the built environment. We’re building something that has never been built before, and changing the way people interact with space. Ours is a long road, but a rewarding one and our ambitions are endless.

If your interest is piqued, let’s have a talk. Shoot me an email at dan@managedbyq.com — we’re hiring engineers, product managers, and designers. We’re changing how the world works, and having a hell of a time. Join us.