The Pocket MVP launched 6 months before I joined the team at Rex Software. It was lightweight, unpolished and lacking functionality. It was exactly what an MVP needed to be.

Pocket’s primary users are Real Estate agents. Who spend a lot of time travelling from appointment to appointment. Opening homes for inspection, meeting sellers, and signing contracts. Pocket gave Real Estate agents access to their CRM when they were out of the office, away from their desktop.

Pocket’s usability problems

While conducting qualitative and quantitative research for other projects. I discovered usability problems, mostly workflow related, which stem from the Pocket homepage.

In my spare time I began tinkering with Pocket’s homepage. Creating new layouts, and concepts. I believed a few minor fixes could dramatically improve the Pocket experience. Two changes were made in the first iteration.

Left - MVP homepage. Right - First iteration.

• The search button has moved. Users weren't navigating to a contact, property or listing record from the homepage menu. With analytics telling us they preferred searching for a record 92% of the time. This was problematic, as our users were reaching a small search button in the top corner of the screen. While the settings and support functionality was within easy reach at the bottom, and taking up a large amount of space. Swapping the search button with settings and support made the important task of searching for a record easier. Without hindering the rarely used settings and support functionality.
• Actions are accessible from the home page. I'd observed users struggling to navigate and complete tasks in Pocket. Becoming stuck and having to turn back mid-flow. Most users had years of experience using Rex before the release of Pocket. They had a pre-existing mental model of how to complete tasks and find information in their CRM. Usability problems were the result of Pocket’s workflows not aligning with users' mental model. In Rex, actions such as adding a note to a record, creating a reminder, or sending an email were always accessible from the top navigation bar. Users select the action first, and then the contact, property or listing record second. This was not the case in Pocket. Where users had to navigate to a record first, to then perform an action against the record. The addition of an action button to the Pocket homepage aligns the Rex and Pocket experiences. Allowing a user to first select an action to perform, then a contact, property or listing record second.

These quick fixes didn't solve our problems

The new concept was well received by the team, but there were still some outstanding problems.

• Too many inconsistent workflows in Rex and Pocket. The addition of an action button to the Pocket homepage didn't go far enough. There were still too many workflows in Pocket that were different to Rex. The Pocket MVP had a different architecture to Rex. With the intention of being lightweight and fast. Which provided value to our on-the-go users. But as the MVP scaled it became clear the workflows in Pocket needed to align with workflows in Rex. Aligning the architecture of Rex and Pocket would allow users to complete the same tasks, in the same manner, in both Rex and Pocket. Eliminating unnecessary friction, and making it easier to add functionality from Rex to Pocket in the future.
• Pocket’s homepage isn’t scalable. Pocket's homepage was a basic menu, listing a few Rex features that were important to our on-the-go users. As time passed, functionality from Rex made its way into Pocket. Doubling the homepage menu. With more features planned in the roadmap. It was obvious we couldn't continue adding to the already extended menu. Pocket needed a homepage that could scale with the addition of new features.
• The efficiency of key tasks needs improving. The design of the Pocket MVP failed to understand the context a user was in. Frequently repeated workflows were too slow and time intensive. Simplifying these workflows would significantly improve the user experience. Resulting in greater customer success. The key workflows needed improving included viewing daily reminders and appointments, navigating to a record, and performing an action.

A refreshed homepage

Adding a bottom tab bar to Pocket improves navigation and helps align the Rex and Pocket experience. The three tabs from left to right are home, search and actions. The user can now search for a record, or perform an action anytime in Pocket, just as they can in Rex.

Straight away when opening Pocket, users see a high level overview of their daily reminders and their next appointment. Selecting the raised daily agenda takes the user to a more detailed view of their reminders and schedule for the day.

Beneath the daily agenda is Pocket's main navigation menu. Which is identical to the navigation menu in Rex. Helping to align the Pocket and Rex experiences, and allowing Rex and Pocket to scale with the same architecture.

Quickly view daily reminders and appointments

Completing reminders between appointments is a common behaviour of Real Estate Agents using Pocket. When speaking to users many believed it was the best use of their free time. They always seemed to have a spare 10 minutes between appointments they didn't want to waste. In the new design, an agent's daily reminders are one click away from the homepage. Here they can complete and check the status of their reminders and more importantly, they can stay productive when out of the office. Users also needed to be able to quickly view their schedule for the day, which is also available from their daily agenda.

Navigating to a record

Users often navigate to a contact, property or listing record to view or edit information, or to perform to the record. It's a task repeated dozens of times a day. It needs to be simple and intuitive.

The search page is accessible from the bottom tab bar. Here the user can select the search bar, revealing the keyboard and beginning their search.

Listed below the search bar are recently opened contacts, properties and listings. Intentionally presented in the same format as the Pocket MVP (horizontal scroll for contacts, vertical scroll for properties and listings). It’s important the new design has some familiarity with the old design, to ease the users learning curve.

The search bar sticks to the top of the screen when scrolling. Providing quick access to the search functionality at any point on the page.

Performing an action

The action page went through many iterations. Most were over-designed, and didn’t meet the objectives. In the end, laying out the actions in a three-by-three grid worked best. Displaying all actions exactly the same way is overwhelming for users. The goal is to not bombard users with actions, but to reduce cognitive load.

The 'adding' and 'communication' actions are different colours. This is so users perceive the nine actions as two separate groups, and not one overwhelming list. When familiar with the layout. Users will instinctively go to the top or bottom group to select an action.

The user’s action history is below the action grid. The action history is a new concept, introduced to make editing and finding recent actions easier. Revealing the recent actions allows users to view or edit these actions from a single place. Instead of the time intensive workflow of searching for a record, and then the action.

Like the search page, the raised action grid sticks to the top of the screen when scrolling.