Finding a reliable and caring babysitter is a bit of a challenge, especially if you are a busy, young parent who’s looking for a last minute childcare support. That’s exactly the kind of problem our client has faced numerous times.
She is a caring mother who loves her children very much but has to take them on business trips quite often. Sometimes it happens twice a month. So she needs a nanny to look after her kids right upon the arrival. That’s how the app idea was born!
Our client decided to develop a dedicated freelancing platform. Some sort of Uber for babysitters that would quickly and securely connect busy parents with experienced and trusted sitters. . Eventually, she asked us to help her create an iOS app tailored for this niche but an ever-growing market.
So meet Village Kids – a reliable iOS application that is meant to become a must-have mobile app for every busy parent. Because let’s face the truth- childcare is a responsible task no one wants to compromise on.
The parent use case is all about convenience and transparency. Since an app deals with the audience that is always short on time, our task was to create a minimal user story that would allow parents to find a sitter in a few minutes max. To find sitter parents need to go no further than the main page which opens after authorization or by clicking Find Sitter button on the tab bar.
By default, the app shows random sitters in the same city where a parent who enters the page is located, but parents can sort sitters by:
Distance
Experience
Hourly Rate
Rating
Repeat ratioIn addition, users can fine-tune their preferences by filling in the Search field or pressing the Filter Search button.
A parent can also place a job in advance or book sitter for a specific date. Once the booking is created, a parent will start receiving notifications if sitters apply for a job, cancel them, or initiate chats.
Unlike the parent’s use case, a sitter profile is far more detailed and customizable. It is designed to demonstrate all the professional strengths of babysitters. On top of the basic info like a photo, name, and years of experience, Village Kids allows sitters to fill in additional details such as:
Many freelancers use babysitting as a part-time job in addition to their education or other activity. That’s why we created an easy-to-manage visual UI that helps users visualize their schedule.
When talking about childcare, additional skills always come in handy. Plus, there is a huge difference between sitting with a newborn and a 7-years old kid. While other freelancing platforms failed to keep in touch with users needs, Village Kids fills in such gaps.
Some parents are willing to pay extra for specific experience to make sure that their children are in good hands. We added an upload functionality that allows sitters to show their qualification.
This feature allows parents to find a sitter nearby. Geolocation is especially useful if a user is new in town. It’s also comes in handy when a parent has an urgent need for a babysitter and can’t wait until the later arrives from another part of a city.
Once the job is completed, a parent receives a push notification to pay a sitter. By clicking on that push notification, parents are redirected to the completed jobs screen where they can leave a review, reopen the position, or pay via Stripe.
Both parents and sitters can initiate conversation in order to clarify details, appoint a meeting or even make a short interview before hiring.
Elastic Compute Cloud
Backend
Rds
Mysql5.6
Since our client’s job involves heavy business travel, she was inspired by such apps as Booking.com and TripAdvisor. We used those apps as references for our project. You may notice that the position of menus and buttons in Village Kids was copied from the one used in travel apps. It was made on purpose because we were targeting the same audience. As a result, frequent travelers will find Village Kids familiar and easy to use.
It was a bit of a challenge to design a clear structure for the sitter tiles. We had to put 12 different informational units on each tile without overloading it. Hopefully, our design team managed to find a golden mean between the sufficient information and a free space.
We opted for pink as a base color for the app. We made that choice primarily because it’s considered a color of calmness. It helps to relieve stress that usually occurs when you’re leaving kids alone.
In addition, western audience associate pink with kids, love, and caring which also contributes to the promotion of the app.
