Covid-19 exposed a need for a barber business management app aimed at barbers looking to work from anywhere. There was not a suitable platform for these barbers to manage their business through.
Most of the existing barbr designs needed updated due to inconsistent design language across the app, website, and marketing material. Also just general improvements to design and useability.
The goal of Barbr was to create an end to end platform for small barbershops and independent barbers to grow there business through an easy to use app.
Help the growing team by taking full responsibility for the UI and UX of the app. Creating new designs for features while also improving existing ones. Improving my own skills and become a better designer.
When I joined this project the app had not been properly launched so it was my job to help get Barbr launch ready, by designing app features, improving our website and creating marketing materials for clients and Barbr its self.
Help grow Barbr through good design and ease of use. Give my input and ideas during meeting for features and ways to improve Barbr. Create advertising marketing materials to get users to sign up.
After months of hard work Barbr finally launched in January of this year! And is now taking on barbers paying a monthly subscription.
Barbr is now available on iOS and Android and so far is performing well with good reviews. Barbr is continuing to listen to any feedback from users to improve the app.
The app has quickly amassed over 7,500 active users from all over the world, so far barbr is biggest in the UK but it is looking promising in the future for further scaling in other countries as we are already seeing a good up take in Europe.
It is still very early days in barbrs journey but are already processing over £75,000 a month in earning for our barbers.
Here I will go over the process I would usually follow when developing a new feature. We would use Asana and Slack for communication and tracking progress of features.
Before begining any kind of design work I would conduct research into a feature to get the scope of what the feature needed to achieve. User research would often be conducted by the CEO of barbr, Reef Ray, he would then relay his finding to me often over a meeting where I'd take notes.
We would then colaborate to build a proposal for the feature complete with, Problem statment, Sucess criteria, User stories, and Scope. Below is an example.
The analysis stage would involve conducting research into like features from other website and app, I would often use Dribbble too to get additional inspiration for features and design.
Above is some analysis for the marketplace feature which was one of the final features I worked on at barbr. this feature was a marketplace for clients to search for barbers through. We need both mobile and web app for this and we also wanted to ultilise a map view like the examples.
After getting some insporation and defining the scope for a feature it is time to start designing! Designs would also begin with some sketches. I personally use an iPad and an apple pencil to do my sketches as I feel it allows me to design much faster with more detail.
Above is some sketches for the marketplace search feature for both mobile and desktop. The general layout is familar and easy to use however, it took me a while to land on a design for the cards which appear in the search results.
Once these sketches were approved for high fidelity designs I began designing in figma.
I was not fully set on an individual barber card design so I did high fidelity design of each to give me a better idea. From this me and my superiors decided on, 2, 3 and 4. 2 for mobile, 3 for desktop, and 4 for the map view pop up on mobile.
Above is the finished design for the mobile and web marketplace. A high fidelity prototype was made for both mobile and web to visualise the UX. I also like to go through and add figma comments to key functionality for the devs.
Lastly, is testing. This would involve the CEO taking the high fidelity prototype I had created to local barbers and barbering friends of his to test the feature. Based on their feedback I would make changes to the prototype until we were happy with it. Once we reached this stage it would be sent off to the devs.
I was also responsible for doing a lot of the iOS and Android testing for what the devs produced. I was my job to find bugs, design discrepancies as well as any UX issues. I would communicate these QA finding through Asana along with an assigned priority and a description of the issue with screenshots and videos where necessary.
I am proud of what I have achieved during my time at barbr, coming in as a complete junior and managing to keep up while being the lead designer from the get go. Being thrown in the deep end like this has definately caused me to learn a lot quicker than someone in a more traditional junior role. My skills and process has come a long way from when I started, suprising my boss with the progress I have made and the work I have done.
Barbr is now in a much more complete state compared to where it was when I begun as the UI/UX designer. It is now being pushed to users and is steadily growing in users and subscriptions.
Barbr has now supassed its MVP and will now continue to add features such as the marketplace to make the services more appealing to a growing audience.
Barbr has continued to grow on iOS and Android with a steady stream of good reviews averaging a 4.6/5 based on the design work I did. There was also a backlog of features I created so the app is still being updated with my work to this day!
I most likely continue to be a part of barbr for the time beging designing where needed on more of a contract basis. However, I am now looking for my next challenge and to grow as a designer now that I have some solid experience under my belt.
I really enjoyed my time at barbr, I got to experience may different types of design work from app to web to email to marketing marterials.
Thank you for taking time to read! If you'd like to hear more don't hesitate to contact me! I hope you enjoyed hearing about my time at barbr and my process. :)