Incentives

How we streamlined both the internal and external Incentives processes.

Timeline

Mar - Jul 2023

Platform

Native App & Web

Context

Like most marketplaces, Taskrabbit struggles to balance Supply and Demand.

Most times, we have more supply than we need, but they're not distributed correctly to meet incoming demand. We can know of these imbalances through metrics like zero/few faces in recommendations and jobs ratio.

We have a few levers for aligning supply with demand to rebalance our marketplace - incentives are one of these levers.

Pain Points

01 Sharing and tracking Incentives

  • As an Ops team member, it is difficult to make Taskers aware of the incentives we offer because we can only share incentives via in-apps or emails right now.

  • As a Tasker, it is difficult to track which incentives I’m eligible for and how I’m progressing toward earning them. (#1 problem limiting impact) It is cumbersome for both Ops & Taskers to know if an incentive was actually earned and should be paid out.

02 Paying out Incentives

  • As an Ops team member, it is difficult & time consuming to pay out the incentive manually for every Tasker who has earned it.

  • As a Tasker, it is difficult to know if an incentive was actually paid, so I contact CS to confirm.

03 Measuring impact

  • It is difficult to measure impact / ROI for an incentive (all done ad-hoc right now).

Problem Statement

Incentives is a lucrative tool that can be utilized to balance Supply and Demand, but it is currently both inconvenient and laborious for the Ops team to run, as well as does not currently exists within the Tasker app (communicated via email).

Admin Feature Goal

How might we empower Taskers to easily track their current incentives from start to finish?

Opportunity

Tasker App Feature Goal

How might we make it easier for the Ops Team to manually create, edit, track, preview, and unpublish incentives directly into the Tasker app?

Assumption: A significant portion of Taskers are looking for ways to earn more money, making incentives highly motivating.

Hypothesis: If we make it easier for Taskers to see & track the incentives they're eligible for, then we will be able to motivate Taskers to change their behavior, thereby distributing our supply more effectively.

This will allow us to better meet Client demand and improve Jobs Ratio.

Gameplan

In FY2023, we will focus on creating a tool that allows Ops to create and visually display incentives in the Tasker App. Upon creating the Incentive, Taskers will be able to see a list of Incentives they’re eligible for via a new Tasker App feature.

This is a two part project:

01 Administrative Tool (to be used by the Rev Ops Team internally)

02 New Tasker App Feature (to allow Taskers to view and track all eligible Incentives)

Design Process

The Taskrabbit product design team uses the double-diamond model when taking on a design project. I began this project at the very beginning with a lot of internal research and process understanding to do.

The problem space included:

01 Gaining full understanding of the manual Incentive process

02 Working cross functionally with Data, Marketing and Rev Ops

03 Finding the best place to include the new Incentive feature within the Tasker app

The solution space included:

01 Exploring various potential design solutions

02 Concept testing with the user

03 Handing off and collaborating with the Engineering team

The Internal (Admin) Incentives Process

The forefront of all Incentives planning is led by the Revenue Operations team. However, the manual procedures engaged the Rev Ops, Marketing, Data, and Tasker Success teams. Owing to the numerous teams participating in Incentives, the situation became somewhat disorganized, and Incentives effectively remained in a perpetual state of being passed around.

The initial phase involved fully grasping the process, consolidating a multitude of separate living documents into a single journey map. This enabled us to pinpoint precisely where the most significant issues lay within the manual process.

From a multi document process…

To a singular Journey Map…

Collaborative Sketching

I strongly advocate for comprehensive and early involvement of the entire team. This project presented a unique chance to have the users participate directly in the design process. I initiated a sketching brainstorm referred to as a Creative Design Session to set in motion the major themes we aim to incorporate into this tool.

Explorations & Design Reviews

While the Taskrabbit Admin website places less emphasis on UI and leans towards a utilitarian approach, I remained undeterred in my pursuit of crafting a visually captivating Incentives page.

As the designs progressed, I held a couple of Design Reviews involving essential stakeholders. The initial review took the form of a conventional meeting, while the second one was conducted asynchronously. I recorded a walkthrough for the team and shared it on Slack, enabling stakeholders to provide feedback on their own time.

We initiated the process by adopting a "puzzle-piece" approach, utilizing the available components from the Admin website to form a preliminary layout for each section of the Incentives webpage.

The Final Internal Design

  • Rev Ops and Marketing have a centralized platform needed to collaborate.

  • Data was released from on-call payout duties, as payout became automatic.

  • Tasker Success Managers gained access to a centralized hub for cross-referencing Tasker support calls related to Incentives.

  • These changes proved particularly advantageous for tackling our central issue of efficiently sharing and tracking Incentives.

  • We successfully devised a creation tool accessible to all teams. This enhancement enables all teams to collaborate simultaneously on the same Incentive – Rev Ops can input the specifics while Marketing handles communication setup.

  • This innovation is projected to reduce the time required for curating each incentive by at least half, if not more.

  • Teams gained the capability to access comprehensive information about each Incentive, including past winners.

  • This development proved particularly beneficial for addressing our third key challenge, measuring the impact of these initiatives.

The Engineering Handoff

From the very beginning, engineers were involved in the process, and at this stage, I get to deliver all the designs, screen flows, interactions, and prototypes to them. My objective is to provide impeccably organized and transparent handoff files, not just for my current team of engineers, but also for any potential future documentation needs.

Expected Admin Outcome

The Engineering team is currently in the process of developing this project. If I were to make a prediction, I believe that this tool has the potential to significantly impact our business objectives of meeting Client demand and enhancing Jobs Ratio (ideally by 8-10%). Moreover, I anticipate this will be a noteworthy internal achievement and could serve as a catalyst for driving innovation in Taskrabbit's processes.

TLDR: An improvement of Job Ratio by 10%.

Part 2: The External (Tasker App) Incentives Process

The second leg of the Incentives project, now that we have an improved internal admin tool is to design a new feature within the Tasker app that will house the Incentives that Taskrabbit will run to help demand (Tasker) meet supply (Clients).

Adding Delight

While the Tasker App maintains a strong focus on utility, our team consistently strives to infuse it with a touch of delight through animations, a sleek user interface, and occasional illustrations.

The introduction of Incentives as a supplementary feature provided an excellent chance to enhance this sense of delight. We took advantage of this opportunity by gamifying the feature and naming it "Carrot Challenges."

Design Approach

01 User Mapping / Flows

02 Sketching

03 Explorations

04 Usability Testing

05 Engineering Handoff

User Flows

To start, I had to plan out all the ways users might use this new feature. I thought about the main steps, what happens if something goes wrong, and which other parts of the app this feature would connect to.

Collaborative Sketching

Then, I organized a collaborative sketching session (Creative Design Session) with important stakeholders and Engineering leaders.

Explorations

After the Creative Design Session, I started generating ideas. During this phase, I had meetings with the entire design team and also conducted individual feedback sessions.

First exploration:

Last exploration:

Usability Testing

When I felt satisfied with the design progress, I enlisted Taskers who had moderate experience to participate in Usability Testing.

The External Final Design

After gaining confidence in our Usability Test outcomes, I refined all the particulars to achieve a pixel perfect final design.

  • 1. Empty State: Live

    All illustrations are size placeholders until this note is deleted by Rachael. We’re working with Marketing to update this asap.

  • 2. Past Challenges

    Only challenges where the user earned ANY amount of money, remains in the Past tab.

  • 3. New Challenge

    When a challenge is live, but no progress has been made, the CTA is in secondary mode. Once progress is made it will update to “Track progress” and become a primary component.

  • 4. Standard: Track Progress

    Users can win an incentive as a general rule, once per category defined.

    In this example where “all categories” is selected, the user can win in as many categories as possible within the incentive date range.

  • 5. Standard Capped: Track Progress

    In Standard Capped, they can see the disabled milestones of the challenge/incentive.

    Once a milestone has been met, the user can begin to “view earnings” via the dynamic button.

  • 6. Schedule Based: Track Progress

    Any eligible invoices made during the date range of a challenge will appear under “Track progress” dynamically.

    Which categories track here is contingent on the categories selected (in this example “all categories”).

  • 7. Completed Challenge

    All complete challenges will remain on the “Live” tab until the challenge expires. At that point it will move to the “Past” tab.

  • 8. View Earnings

    Once a challenge is complete, the user can see how much they earned, a breakdown of which categories they earned it in, and the details of the incentive.

The Engineering Handoff

Lastly, I established a well-structured reference for all the finalized designs and presented them to the Engineering team in a detailed walkthrough.

Expected Tasker Outcome

The Engineering team is currently working on developing the project. From my perspective, I anticipate that this new feature will be well-received. Taskers have already been participating in Incentives, but they had to track their progress outside the app.

With the integration of Incentives into "Carrot Challenges," we project a 56% increase in Incentive participation.

TLDR: Adoption rate of over 80%, and a participation increase of 56%.