Village Kids – Marketplace and Booking App For Babysitters

01 The Challenge

The 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 approached us to help create an iOS app tailored to this ever-growing market niche.

So, meet Village Kids – a reliable iOS application meant to become a must-have mobile app for every busy parent. Let’s face the truth: childcare is a responsible task no one wants to compromise on.

02 The Solution

Use cases

Parents

The parent use case is all about convenience and transparency. Since an app deals with an audience that is always short on time, our task was to create a minimal user story allowing parents to find a sitter in a few minutes max. Parents need to go to the main page to find a sitter, which opens after authorisation, or by clicking the Find Sitter button on the tab bar.

By default, the app shows random sitters in the same city, but parents can sort sitters by:

• Distance
• Experience
• Hourly rate
• Rating
• Repeat ratio

In 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 a sitter for a specific date. Once the booking is created, a parent will receive notifications if sitters apply for a job, cancel them, or initiate chats.

• Sitter’s gender
• Parent’s postcode
• Preferred hourly rate
• Type of experience

Sitters

Unlike the parent’s use case, a sitter profile is far more detailed and customisable. 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:

Typical Availability
Many freelancers use babysitting as a part-time job in addition to their education or other activities. That’s why we created an easy-to-manage visual UI that helps users visualise their schedules.

Special Skills & Experience
When talking about childcare, additional skills always come in handy. There is a huge difference between sitting with a newborn and a 7-year-old kid. While other freelancing platforms failed to meet users’ needs, Village Kids fills in such gaps.

Credentials & Ratings
Some parents are willing to pay extra for specific experiences to make sure that their children are in good hands. We added an upload functionality that allows sitters to show their qualifications.

Integrations

Geolocation

This feature allows parents to find a sitter nearby. Geolocation is especially useful if a user is new in town. It also comes in handy when a parent has an urgent need for a babysitter and can’t wait until the latter arrives from another part of a city.

Chat

Both parents and sitters can initiate conversation in order to clarify details, schedule a meeting, or even conduct a short interview before hiring.

Payment gateway

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.

03 The Result

Technologies

Design

General style

Since our client’s job involves heavy business travel, she was inspired by apps like 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.

Information architecture

It was 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 sufficient information and free space.

Colour palette

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 leave kids alone.

In addition, western audiences associate pink with kids, love, and caring, which also contributes to the app’s promotion.

Features & integrations

• Social logins
• Messaging
• Geolocation
• Notifications for events
• Booking
• Payment gateway – Stripe