Designing a multi-platform marketplace that connects qualified cleaners with employers across the UK through seamless hiring, job management, and business operations.
Project Overview
Role: UI/UX Designer
Timeline: 2 Months
Industry: SaaS • Marketplace • Property Services
Impact: Designed and launched a four-platform marketplace that streamlines how employers discover trusted cleaners while enabling cleaning professionals to find quality job opportunities, creating a scalable foundation for service management across the United Kingdom.
Executive Summary
As the Lead Product Designer, I led the end-to-end design of Glintify, a digital marketplace built to simplify how employers hire trusted cleaners across the United Kingdom. Rather than creating another job listing website, the goal was to build a connected ecosystem where employers could confidently find verified cleaning professionals while cleaners gained consistent access to quality job opportunities. Working across four interconnected platforms, I designed a scalable experience that balances trust, operational efficiency, and business growth for employers, cleaners, and platform administrators.
Design system, Dashboard Design
UX Research, Product Design
The Challenge
"Finding reliable cleaners takes too much time. We post jobs in different places, chase referrals, and still can't be sure the person arriving is qualified. We needed one trusted platform where we could hire confidently and manage everything in one place."
This conversation with prospective employers became the foundation of the product. Despite growing demand for residential and commercial cleaning services across the UK, the hiring process remained fragmented. Employers relied on social media, classified ads, agencies, and word-of-mouth recommendations to find cleaners, while qualified professionals struggled to consistently access legitimate job opportunities. The challenge wasn't simply connecting two groups of users. It was designing a trusted marketplace where employers could confidently hire qualified cleaners, cleaners could build sustainable work opportunities, and administrators could efficiently manage the entire ecosystem.
Project Constraints
1. Designing for four interconnected platforms while maintaining a consistent user experience. 2.Balancing the needs of employers, cleaners, and platform administrators. 3. Building trust between users who have never interacted before. 4. Creating efficient job matching workflows for different cleaning categories. 5. Supporting scalable operations as cleaner registrations and employer requests increase. 6. Designing an accessible experience for users with varying levels of digital literacy.
Research & Discovery
Competitive Analysis: Learning from Marketplace Leaders
To understand how successful service marketplaces build trust and simplify hiring, I conducted UX audits of Taskrabbit, Thumbtack, Bark, Indeed, LinkedIn Jobs, and Handy. I evaluated onboarding experiences, profile verification, job discovery, search filters, messaging systems, dashboards, and trust-building mechanisms across desktop and mobile platforms. Key Insight: The strongest marketplaces don't simply connect buyers and service providers. They reduce uncertainty before a transaction takes place. Clear profiles, transparent pricing, verified professionals, intuitive search, and streamlined communication consistently increased user confidence and encouraged engagement. These insights directly influenced Glintify's employer dashboard, cleaner verification process, job discovery experience, and dashboard architecture.
User Interviews: Understanding Both Sides of the Marketplace
Because Glintify serves two primary user groups, I conducted semi-structured interviews with both employers seeking cleaning services and professional cleaners looking for work opportunities. The objective wasn't simply to understand features users wanted.It was to understand how each group evaluated trust, managed communication, and made hiring decisions. Critical Discovery: Employers weren't struggling to find cleaners. They were struggling to know which cleaner to trust. Likewise, cleaners weren't struggling to find work. They were struggling to identify legitimate, high-quality opportunities without wasting time on unreliable listings. This insight fundamentally shaped the product strategy, shifting the focus from job listings to creating a trusted hiring ecosystem built around verification, transparency, and efficient matching.
Usability Testing Strategy
Interactive prototypes were tested through moderated usability sessions involving both employers and professional cleaners. Participants completed realistic tasks including creating accounts, searching for jobs, hiring cleaners, reviewing applications, managing bookings, and communicating through the platform. Testing Focus 1. Employer onboarding and cleaner discovery. 2. Cleaner onboarding and job application workflows. 3. Dashboard navigation. 4. Job management. 5. Search and filtering. 6. Communication flows. 7. Trust indicators throughout the marketplace.
Design Strategy
Trust-First Marketplace
Because Glintify connects strangers through paid services, trust became the foundation of every design decision. Design Challenge: Creating a trustworthy marketplace required: 1. Prioritizing cleaner verification throughout the experience. 2. Making profiles transparent and informative. 3. Reducing hiring friction without compromising confidence. 4. Designing intuitive communication between employers and cleaners.
Dashboard-First Experience
Unlike traditional job boards, Glintify revolves around continuous management after hiring. Rather than focusing only on discovery, I designed dashboards that enable users to efficiently manage jobs, bookings, applications, earnings, schedules, and account activity from one central workspace. This included: 1. Personalized dashboards. 2. Intelligent job management. 3. Streamlined application tracking. 4. Real-time notifications. 5. Clear account management.
Cross-Functional Collaboration Framework
Building Glintify required continuous collaboration between product stakeholders and developers to ensure marketplace workflows aligned with business goals. This collaboration included: 1. Product workshops defining marketplace priorities. 2. User flow mapping sessions across employers and cleaners. 3. Iterative design critiques before high-fidelity production. 4. Component-driven design documentation. 5 Developer handoffs with responsive specifications and interaction guidelines.
Implementation & Testing
Prototype Validation
High-fidelity interactive prototypes were validated before development to evaluate onboarding, hiring, job management, and dashboard workflows. The validation process enabled: 1. Early identification of usability issues. 2. Refinement of employer and cleaner journeys. 3. Improved navigation across dashboards. 4. Increased confidence before engineering implementation.
Results & Impact
User Impact 1.Reduced friction in discovering trusted cleaning professionals. 2. Simplified job discovery for cleaners through intuitive dashboards. 3.Increased transparency with verification-focused profiles. 4.Created seamless experiences across employers, cleaners, and administrators. Business Value 1.Established a scalable marketplace platform for the UK cleaning industry. 2. Strengthened trust through verification and transparent user experiences. 3. Created efficient hiring and job management workflows. Built the digital foundation for future platform expansion, subscriptions, and premium marketplace services.
(Business Metrics)
Metrics
6%
6%
Task Success Rate
10%
10%
Booking Completion
5%
5%
Increased User Confidence
0+
0+
Integrated platforms
5+
5+
End-to-end user journeys
10%
10%
Accurate Truck Selection
(Project)
