Find Mech — A mechanic listing Site Case Study

Ehioze Godspower Ebiowei
5 min readDec 16, 2020

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Mechanic working on a vehicle

What is FindMech — FindMech is a mechanic listing website that allows users to get the nearest mechanic anywhere their vehicle breaks down. This saves you the stress of waiting for your personal mechanic or looking for a mechanic around that vicinity.

The Problem

It was a Monday morning, I was traveling to work and the car broke down in a lonely path. I was a long way from home and the touts in that region forced me to pay them money to allow me park my vehicle there. I was finally able to contact my mechanic, his shop was very far from where my vehicle broke down. Had to wait for hours before the mechanic could locate my location and come to fix the vehicle which I had to leave and collect the next day.

Most vehicle users have had this experience of their vehicles developing faults in an unfamiliar location. Also mechanics have a hard time setting up an online shop where people can easily contact them for their services. FindMech solves the problem and allows users to easily contact mechanics for their services.

The Solution

I came up with a solution that allows both vehicle owners and mechanics to use the web app easily and without distractions. Users can easily search for mechanics around the region where their vehicle developed a fault and contact the nearest mechanic around that region.

This also allows mechanics to upload their services on the website and get people that will need their services.

Project Goals

  1. Platform that connects vehicle owners and mechanics.
  2. Contact mechanics close to the place their vehicle developed fault.
  3. Solve the long waiting time period vehicle owners had to face when their vehicles break down.
  4. Mechanics can have an online shop where they sell their services
  5. Simple interface
  6. Interactive

My Process

I carried out user research by talking to vehicle owners to understand their pain points and to find out how often their vehicles have developed faults in an unfamiliar location. Also created a user survey to determine whether people needed this solution for their problem and how

I then carried out a competitive analysis to find out how mechanic websites have tried to solve this problem and compare them against a set of benchmark to drive how I would solve this problem.

I created user personas based on the data I got from my user research.

Competitive Analysis

Direct Competitors

mycarneedsa.com, www.openbay.com, www.clickmechanic.com

Pros

  • Users can input their location
  • Mobile Responsive
  • Users can book an appointment
  • Simple to understand what the sites are created to do which is to allow users book for appointment to repair their vehicle and the mechanic comes to either their home or office to repair the vehicle

Cons

  • No listing service of mechanics close to a user location

Indirect Competitors

https://www.tripadvisor.com/, https://www.vconnect.com/ , https://hotels.ng/

Pros

  • They contain listing services ranging from hotels, to restaurants and attractive centers
  • Users can create accounts and sign in
  • Recently viewed listed services is shown on the homepage

Cons

  • User can’t input their location
  • User can’t search for the service close to them

User Survey

User Flow

Gathering data from the research, I created user flow to understand the path a prospective user will take on the website.

User Persona

I created two user personas on prospective users of the website who represented the target audience and match their concerns with the solutions intended.

Wireframes

After analyzing all the data from my UX research, I created low-fidelity designs to establish the basic structure of the website.

Styleguide

High Fidelity Screens

Create Account Page
Login Screen
Homepage
Mechanic Listing Page
Mechanic Details Page
Articles Screen
Become a Mechanic screen

Mobile Responsive Screens

Thank you for reading🙏

— Ebiowei

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