KovaApp – Book cleaning services quickly and effortlessly

Design & Creative E-Commerce & Retail

About Project

Project Overview

Kova App is a digital marketplace that connects people who need cleaning services with verified professional cleaners — apartments, offices, post-renovation spaces, the works. The product is built around a single principle: booking should feel as light as the result. Pick a package, customize what you need, see who’s available, confirm in a few clicks.

We were responsible for the full product cycle — UX research, system architecture, UI design, frontend and backend development, payment integration, and the admin tooling that keeps the marketplace running.

Website https://www.kovaapp.com/
Duration 4-5 months
Location Remote
Domain Service Marketplace / On-Demand

How we work

We started with deep market research into on-demand service platforms — studying the dynamics that make multi-sided marketplaces succeed or stall. The core insight: marketplaces don’t fail on features, they fail on trust. So we designed three connected interfaces — the client booking platform, the cleaner dashboard, and the admin panel — around one principle: every interaction should reduce uncertainty.
Our cross-functional team (UX/UI designers + full-stack engineers) worked in two-week sprints. Frontend was built on React with Next.js for fast page loads and SEO-friendly server rendering. The backend runs on Python Django with PostgreSQL — a proven stack for marketplaces with complex relationships between users, orders, transactions, and verification states. Stripe Connect handles the marketplace payments (split payouts to cleaners, escrow logic, refunds). Real-time order notifications and chat run on WebSockets, and media uploads go through AWS S3 with image optimization.
Trust-focused features — 4-step cleaner verification, transparent pricing breakdowns, two-way rating systems — were prototyped, user-tested, and iterated before going to production.

Task

For most people, booking a cleaner online still feels like rolling dice. Pricing is unclear. You don’t know who’s actually showing up at your door. Forms are long, services are vague, and there’s no real way to compare. Traditional platforms either drown users in options or strip away the human signal that makes someone feel safe letting a stranger into their home.
Kova set out to fix this — not just by simplifying the flow, but by designing every screen, every microcopy line, every confirmation email to make users feel safe, informed, and in control.
The technical and product challenges were layered:

Multi-sided marketplace complexity — balancing the needs of clients, cleaners, and admins in one coherent system
Trust between strangers — verification, ratings, transparent pricing, and dispute resolution had to feel built-in, not bolted on
Operational scalability — the admin tooling had to handle order monitoring, document verification, and dispute resolution without ballooning support costs
Real-time coordination — clients, cleaners, and admins all needed live updates without page refreshes or notification spam
Payment integrity — split payouts, escrow logic, refund handling, all under Stripe’s marketplace rules

Result

The result is a clean, trustworthy booking experience that reflects the professionalism of the Kova Cleaning brand. Users move through the journey with confidence — from picking a package to confirming a cleaner — because each step is designed to reinforce the answers to three questions: Is this clear? Is this fair? Is this safe?
Predefined packages (apartment, office, post-renovation, deep clean) speed up decisions for users who just want to book. The custom package builder gives flexibility for users with non-standard needs — choose specific rooms, specific tasks, specific add-ons. Pricing updates live as the user makes choices.
Behind the scenes, the platform handles real-time order publishing, cleaner applications, in-app messaging, payment escrow through Stripe, and a verification workflow that actually filters for quality.

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Visual Design Approach

The visual language was designed to evoke cleanliness, trust, and ease — not by saying it, but by feeling it. The light blue and white palette communicates hygiene and transparency. Rounded shapes, generous white space, and soft gradients keep the user’s attention focused and unhurried.

Custom illustrations carry warmth and personality without distracting from the core flows — they appear at decision points, where users typically hesitate, and act as soft visual reassurance. Typography is clean and modern, using a single sans-serif family across all weights for readability across desktop and mobile.

Platform Architecture

Kova is a full-service digital ecosystem with three interconnected interfaces:

Client Platform — registration, package selection, custom order builder, cleaner application review, in-app messaging, secure Stripe payments, post-service rating.

Cleaner Dashboard — verification onboarding, available orders feed (filtered by location and service type), application submission with personal notes, communication with clients, earnings tracking, and review history.

Admin Panel — order monitoring, cleaner verification queue, document review, dispute resolution tools, platform analytics, and user management.

The three interfaces share a common backend (Django + PostgreSQL) but are designed as separate frontend experiences — each tailored to the specific tasks and mental models of its user.

Client Flow — From Request to Clean Home

The client journey starts on a homepage built to communicate trust within the first 5 seconds. A single primary action — “Order a cleaner” — leads to a guided order form where the user picks a package or builds a custom one by selecting rooms and tasks.

Once submitted, the order is published to the marketplace and visible to verified cleaners in the selected area. The client receives an email confirmation and starts receiving applications from available cleaners, each with their rating, completed jobs count, and a personal note explaining why they’re a fit.

Inside the dashboard, the client compares applicants, picks one, and confirms the booking. Payment is held in escrow via Stripe until the job is marked complete. After completion, the client leaves a rating and review — closing the trust loop and feeding into the cleaner’s reputation score.

Cleaner Flow — From Registration to Earning Income

Cleaners go through a 4-step verification process designed to filter for genuine professionals:

Submit identity documents — government-issued ID, work eligibility documents
Schedule a video call with a Kova team member through built-in calendar booking
Complete the call — present documents on camera, share work experience, answer screening questions
Get verified and start receiving order notifications matched to your service area

Once verified, cleaners browse the active orders feed, apply to jobs they want with a personal note, communicate with clients through in-app messaging, and mark jobs complete to trigger payment release. Each completed job feeds the cleaner’s rating, which directly affects visibility in future applications.

Admin Panel

The admin panel is built for the operations team — the people who keep the marketplace healthy. It centralizes order monitoring, cleaner verification queue management, document review, dispute resolution, and analytics on platform health (active users, conversion rates, average order value, dispute frequency).

Built with usability and clarity in focus, the panel makes it easy for non-technical support staff to handle complex workflows without engineering involvement.

Outcome

The platform is currently live in beta, with active client–cleaner transactions running through it. The booking experience reflects the professionalism of the Kova Cleaning brand — simplifying a process that traditionally felt frustrating, while addressing the emotional needs (confidence, control, comfort) that turn first-time users into repeat customers.

The architecture is built to scale — additional service categories (handyman, gardening, beauty-at-home) can plug into the same marketplace logic without rewriting the core. Beta feedback is currently informing the v2 roadmap.