First we conducted an extensive UX audit of the existing app user experience. Our first step was to map out every part of TempStars' product and create journey maps outlining all communication received for each user type.
TempStars is a two-sided marketplace serving both dental offices and dental professionals, so this necessitated a very large and detailed map. In addition, there are four distinct disciplines within the dental professional users, all with their own specific work needs.
Next we appraised the product against our own heuristic benchmarks, user testing insights, and input from internal stakeholders to determine obvious areas for improvement or low-hanging UX fruit.
Together we determined that a modernisation of the interface would give the app a significant lift. With limited development resource available it was up to us to determine how to achieve this in the most cost-effective, time-efficient way.
As an early mover in the dental temping space, TempStars built up a dominant position in Canada. But like many startups, the design had been updated piece by piece as features and priorities shifted.
In new markets with stiffer competition the existing design would struggle to stand out and marketing spend might be wasted or ineffective due to poor uptake.
As design & development resource was limited, we decided to use a pre-existing design system. We chose Material UI because some parts of the app were already built with this, and the excellent MUI figma library could be used to create our design assets.
Adopting the design system and branding it for TempStars gave us some major benefits: we could very quickly optimise the design of existing features on iOS, Android, and web at the same time; it was painless to update the brand as we knew a TempStars re-brand would arrive mid-project; and we could focus on the overall experience.
We worked closely with our client to soak up their extensive dental domain knowledge. Our shared vision was to turn TempStars' proposition into a modern, easy to use service speaking directly to the needs of young dental professionals with a desire to work on their own terms.
