Hire a Pro

Every day on Nextdoor, thousands of people ask their neighbors to recommend someone who can install, fix, or clean something in their home. 

Hire a Pro was a new product created to better connect neighbors to these local service providers.

Both the neighbors and the pros would benefit from time savings, fast online payments, and increased trust. 

At the time, this was the largest product I had led content strategy for to date, and I was the sole content designer on the team. I worked with three product designers, two product managers and countless engineers.

Working from scratch, we crafted experiences that managed expectations for both user audiences (neighbors + businesses), ensured transparency in process and pricing, and clarified payment and legal terms to ensure Nextdoor was a place where these relationships could thrive.

How it worked

A home service provider would activate the Hire a Pro feature so they could provide quotes, book jobs, collect payments, and build a word-of-mouth reputation on Nextdoor. 

Neighbors were able to find trusted, expert help in just a couple of clicks.

The biggest UX challenge was facilitating both sides of the transaction from our simple inbox tool, which at the time, didn’t have timestamps, read receipts, or support for video uploads.

Given these technical constraints, we had a lot of work to do to make this tool robust.