The Scout App
Keyo rented apartments in NYC and the Bay Area (acquired by Zillow in 2019). We employed Scouts – gig-economy workers – who were locals in the community to facilitate on-demand apartment viewings, all while eliminating broker fees. Prospective tenants browsed listings and scheduled viewings on our website. Owners managed inventory and approved applications through our web-based dashboard.
Challenges
Two groups use Keyo’s app to rent apartments in NYC: tenants and Scouts. Tenants apply for apartments and pay rent while Scouts are locals who earn cash by showing apartments to prospective tenants on-demand, among various other tasks.
By understanding these separate use cases comes the implementation of two stand-alone apps, one for each tenants and Scouts. The following was my first conceptual approach of the Scout app. The “Bid flow” solution was a team effort.
THE CURRENT APP
Several issues surfaced from our analysis and the feedback we received from Scouts. The first was the effects of high competition. When two Scouts accept a new task, only one gets that task, while the other sees the task disappear before their eyes, a big frustration. Second, Scouts would frequently cancel tasks moments before they were scheduled to begin, which we did not understand. Finally, the Earnings screen served two purposes: a cursory review of completed tasks and manual process of cashing out. We received overwhelming enthusiasm from Scouts over how much they love showing apartments, helping people, and that they want more engagement.
Solutions
The decision to design a separate Scout app allows for the proper placement of features to align with Keyo’s goals, the nature of the work, and Scouts’ behavior.
Home (center)
To offer more visibility for upcoming tasks, information is organized by relevance with the most important positioned at the top, and a tabbed structure to separate today’s activity from what lies ahead. Location-based surge incentives and promotions help Scouts plan their schedules. Our aim is to welcome more deliberate participation by showing the best times to be available.
Tasks (right)
Rarely do tasks get scheduled beyond two weeks in advance, so the idea to present a calendar view was swapped for a one-week view, up to two weeks in advance. To solve for frustration around disappearing tasks and to avoid cancellations, we slowed down the process of accepting tasks by changing the “accept” button to “details”, which takes Scouts to what we call the “bid acceptance flow”, described later.
Earnings Dashboard
We switched to automatic payments so Scouts no longer cash out manually. Earnings can now become a robust feature to show activity insight, track progress, and more.
Engagement
Creating games and challenges for Scouts to achieve brings more importance to their work and rewards their participation. The possibilities to engage Scouts more frequently and with more delight are endless.
Gamification
When you feel good about the work you do, you do better work. Setting goals is important for success. We achieve our goals when we demonstrate accountability and action.
BID ACCEPTANCE FLOW
The purpose of this flow is twofold: to make Scouts’ behavior more intentional by slowing them down, and to clarify that multiple Scouts can simultaneously attempt to pick up new tasks. So instead of “accepting” tasks, Scouts now place bids. After a Scout acknowledges their availability, they are added to a queue. A two-step animation implies they are among a pool of Scouts, with “Finding the best match” appearing next in the sequence. The confirm/reject screen completes the flow and shows whether that Scout received the task or if another did.
Learnings
Scouts’ response to the bid flow was very positive; they aren’t frustrated by the “dead end” of seeing tasks disappear. The most important metric we found was the Scout cancellation rate decreased by over 90%, with periods of time where we had zero cancellations whatsoever. While the remainder of this project has not been released, we planned out Mixpanel events and calculations to monitor churn rate, measure engagement, and so on. Some additions to this concept could be customizable reminders for achieving goals, reintroducing the earnings ledger in some fashion, and allowing Scouts to specify favorite neighborhoods and preferred times for work.