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Time: 10 weeks (June 2020 - September 2020)
Program: Design Co. Level Up, a 10-week internship-level program
Deliverables: high fidelity prototype, team case study, and weekly project presentations
Team: Samantha Cheung (visual designer), Emily Tam (UX researcher), and Ria Thompson (product designer) - we all worked from a remote location
My role: product designer and content strategist
Beginning in March 2020, COVID-19 desolated streets in our local neighborhoods, leaving behind empty restaurants, boarded up storefronts, and even for sale signs on our favorite local businesses. Small business owners (SBOs) relied on each other to understand new policies and how to safely keep their business afloat.
SBOs do not have a designated communication platform. They jump between different apps and websites to ask questions, share helpful ideas, and create new connections. Having all these resources in one place will alleviate the stress SBOs are currently having with adapting to the pandemic.
I took notes during our interviews with 8 different SBOs of food and retail businesses throughout California. SBOs constantly dig through myriads of resources to learn about obtaining appropriate loan information, minimizing the unemployment of employees, and incorporating delivery services. This takes away their time, overwhelms them with more tasks, and adds stress. We saw a pattern of certain struggles throughout all of our interviews.
“It’s been very hard. We had to close for two months, but I’m lucky that we can open up again because we still have to pay rent.” (Mai, Adorable Flowers)
“It’s stressful to file and have to keep up with [loans], so we were fortunate to get the PPP money.” (Linda, Mitchell's Ice Cream)
“With all this information coming out, if I didn’t have a [Small Business Administration] mentor in my back pocket, I wouldn’t know what to do with [my loan].” (Margaret, Self-Employed)
“It’s really tough right now...it’s kind of like a mental battle for everybody because it’s not just COVID. It’s a long-term game of how we can survive all of this.” (Lam, The Forum Coffee House)
We built an affinity diagram out of the frustrations we heard in our interviews. The sticky notes were organized into clusters to help us identify needs. 3 "How Might We..." statements emerged from our clusters of sticky notes. This process funneled a vast problem space into a manageable challenge to tackle.
We conducted a competitive analysis to understand how other platforms are addressing our "How Might We..." statements. Examining existing solutions helped us build new strategies and improve upon what SBOs find useful. Knowing the positive characteristics guided the creation of our user persona and solution concepts. We listed the negative aspects to help us avoid the same pain points later in our development.
We wanted to replicate the following characteristics:
Aspects we wanted to adjust include:
Our users were summarized into one persona: Peter. A persona simplifies our solution process by highlighting the pain points felt by all of our users. Designing with Peter in mind is easier to manage than balancing the various inputs from our interviews.
Peter is a co-owner with his cousin of Scoopity Scoop, an ice cream shop in San Jose, California. The pandemic has put a stop to all in-person interactions. Peter's shop needs a way to serve customers to prevent closing.
Wants/Needs:
Pain Points:
Our team brainstormed 3 mobile app ideas and presented them to SBOs. We asked them which concept would best address their needs. The interviewees gravitated towards a community engagement platform. They prefer this solution because it allows them to gain insight from one another in a space just for them, designed to best fit their unique needs.
The "Happy Path" is the most essential steps users have to take in our app. This user flow allowed our team to understand the mindset and process SBOs. We adhered to this map to wireframe the minimum necessary screens.
I created wireframes to organize the content of the main 3 features: posting in a community, joining a group, and messaging other SBOs. I focused on layout and concepts to rapidly generate ideas. This is important because we wanted to produce a high quantity of ideas to diversify our solutions instead of investing time and effort into one idea.
I made low fidelity prototypes after our team finalized what concepts we should pursue. We used Marvel to do usability tests and more concept validation with 4 SBOs. They thought the flow of events were logical, but some icons and buttons didn't represent what comes next.
Our team designed 7 iterations before reaching the final product. Each version was tested with 1-2 SBOs. Their feedback provided the key requirements for the next redesign.
“I would probably turn away from this [home page] because there's too many things ... make it easy for them to get right at a solution.”
“I'm very careful what I communicate, because I don't want to talk about prices with the other business owner because of the antitrust laws ... You have to have boundaries.”
“Things can get very messy within a single post, ... how would you organize that to make it clear cut so people can get to these ideas? There should be a way you can pin [posts] or share it with other people.”
“I would be looking for a very strong business profile for each person.”
We created tags to simplify how users skim through posts. 4 SBOs were presented two version of adding tags to a post. They let us know which which option was more beneficial for them. We used A/B testing to decide the best way to implement a feature.
Tags were an optional part of the posting process. This version left some posts untagged, which in turn made it more difficult for business owners to easily find information relevant to them.
Tags were a required part of the posting process. After drafting their message, users were prompted with this screen to add at least one tag to their post.
“This is a good option for people to [make sure they] see similar categories they’d want to see.”
Click here to view the final high fidelity prototype. Feel free to read our team case study here.
NextStore was presented to the rest of the Level Up program and industry professionals. We were awarded the "For the People, by the People" superlative for our quality work with SBOs. We couldn't measure success by downloads or engagement on the app because this project wasn't meant to be launched. However, all of the SBOs we worked with believed this app would be a valuable solution that they would download from the app store.
This project grew onto us. My teammates and I are exploring how to launch a start-up. All the small business owners we interviewed were disappointed when we said it wouldn't go past a prototype. Our future plan is to design the rest of the app in great detail so that hand-off can easily happen.
This project taught me how to communicate remotely with different roles. I made sure I was on the same page as my teammates. I also learned how to present my progress to supervisors and other designers by practicing storytelling and compiling weekly updates.
Thanks to Ria, Emily, and Samantha (aka Kids NextStore) for being wonderful teammates. I'm glad that we got to learn so much from each other. Thanks to our mentors Peter and Paula for guiding us through the whole journey. I hope y'all enjoy our gift of gratitude.
Shoutout to all the small business owners for collaborating with us. We valued every feedback you gave.
