UX Research, UI Design, No-Code Web App Build, Design System documentation
Freelance UX & Product Design consultant
iOS, Android, Web App
TempStars was founded & built by Dr James Younger DDS to alleviate the stress of finding qualified hygienists and assistants at short notice.
I worked with TempStars to re-imagine their core app experience to support growth plans and modernise their offering to appeal to a wider audience.
2x
Increase in completed shifts after launch of improved design
80%
Reduction in design & development costs through improved processes
$28m
Revenue increase for Dental Offices after redesign (127%)
First I 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, ran a user research study, and gathered input from internal stakeholders to determine areas for improvement. These were then prioritised according to business and user value.
Together we determined that a modernisation of the interface would give the app a significant lift. With limited development resource available we had 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, I decided to use a pre-existing design system. I chose Material UI because some parts of the app were already built with this. This made it an easy sell to the development team and meant we could hit the ground running adapting the MUI Figma library for the TempStars brand.
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.
