THE GOODSMITHS

Connecting Ethical Businesses With Ethical Consumers

The goodsmiths are a platform that connects ethical and environmentally friendly businesses with ethically conscious consumers. The good smiths run another business that does consulting for ethical businesses. They were merging the consulting business under the good smiths brand and website. Our job was to design the best way to 'triage' the different users - consumers, business owners and consulting clients - to their relevant paths.

Deliverables & Constraints

Research artefacts (customer journeys, personas etc).
Prototype.
10 day sprint

Roles

The User

Problem statement & Scope

Three UX/UI Designers.
My role, was predominantly research and research synthesis based.

Socially/environmentally aware consumers.
Socially/environmetally aware business owners.
.Consulting clients who also business owners

How might we better contextualise the experiences of different users so as to provide them with the neccesary information to to encourage interest and spark further action in the Goodsmith's community.

Deliverables & constraints

Preliminary Research

Desktop research
Client meeting
Competitor analysis

Primary Research

First round contextual inquiry + usability testing
Second round contextual inquiry + usability testing
Third round contextual inquiry + usability testing
Survey

Prototyping

Wireframe sketches + usability testing
Hi-def prototype + usability testing
Hi-def prototype iteration + usability testing

Research Synthesis

Pain points & personas
Customer Journey
Task flows
MVP matrix
Process flows

Desktop Research & Dissecting The Brief

First we dissected the brief. In this case it was straight forward, they were combining two brands with two different websites into one brand and one larger website with different sections. It was a brand consolidation project. Then we did some desktop research to familiarise ourselves with the Good Smiths website, customers and client businesses.

Preliminary Research

Client Meeting

We then consulted with our client regarding the brief and gathered insights into their understanding of their consumers and the reasons why they were pursuing the path of brand consolidation. The client's main concern was that the different 'users' could optimally find the information that was relevant to them.

First Round Contextual Inquiry

Given that we knew our task was to integrate the user experience of consumers, business owners and consulting clients we moved fast with contextual inquires because we needed to know in detail how the different users were experiencing the website.

On the same day we met with our clients, we headed out to visit one of the events they were attending. At the local business meet up organized at the Melbourne University campus, we asked consumers and business owners to use the goodsmiths website. Our goal was to find out how different users explored the website, what their perceptions were of different website elements and what expectations they might have to improve their own experience. We set them basic tasks and to use the platform as if they had come across it through a social media advertisement. We prompted them to think out loud.

Primary Research

Second Round Contextual Inquiry: Consumers

Then we went to another event about ethical clothes shopping and targeted consumers who tightly fit our proto-persona (Melbournian female, mid 30’s to late 40’s, highly involved in green community activities).

We wanted to find out what they liked, what they didn’t like and how they used the website. We based our proto-persona on the client’s previous marketing research and experience.

We asked consumers to perform tasks such as; finding and purchasing a product, exploring the website and finding out about the Goodsmiths. We noted what difficulties they experienced. We asked them to think out loud as they went through the task. This way we could gather as many insights as possible.

Here’s what we found out...

Positives:

High level of trust.
Positive attitude towards community.
Positive outlook on the Goodsmiths mission. (They love the story).

Negatives:

They were confused (who, what, where - at least at first).
Lots of glitches such as apparent signifiers that went nowhere. (these eroded trust)
Poor/non-existent search functionality (categories, styles etc).
Generally poor mobile usability.
Impact of purchasing from these businesses was vague and undefined.

Third Round Contextual Inquiry: Business Owners & Consulting Clients

We located ethical businesses in the area and went out and asked them to use the Goodsmiths' website. Our purpose was to discover the perceptions, objections and doubts that might prevent them from using the Goodsmiths platform. By the same token we wanted to find out what part of the website experience made them more likely to work with Goodsmiths.

We asked them to take a look at the website without explaining what it does to test how effectively the website conveyed its purpose. We asked them to perform tasks necessary for business owners to move forward with a call to action. For example finding pricing information or applying for the platform. Again, we asked them to explain their process out loud and noted down all insights.

Here’s what we found out...

Positives:

a strong sense that the Goodsmiths service was ‘needed’.
Love of the mission/story.

Negatives:

Uncertainty regarding ‘the deal’.
Lack of proof (both social and statistics).
Functionality glitches on mobile/poor mobile functionality.
Gives impression of an Op-shop.

Note: we did not have access to many consulting clients as the majority of clients used the marketing platform. To adjust, we treated ethical business owners as potential consulting clients.

Second Round Contextual Inquiry: Consumers

We wanted to find out how they used the website. We based our proto-persona on the client’s previous marketing research and experience.

Here’s what we found out...

Positives:

High level of trust.
Positive attitude towards community.
Positive outlook on the Goodsmiths mission. (They love the story).

Negatives:

They were confused (who, what, where - at least at first).
Lots of glitches such as apparent signifiers that went nowhere. (these eroded trust)
Poor/non-existent search functionality (categories, styles etc).
Generally poor mobile usability.
Impact of purchasing from these businesses was vague and undefined.

Survey

We sent out two surveys.

Conscious consumers
Ethical business owners

The purpose of the survey was to gather insights into their needs, behaviours and demographics.

Key insight:

Consumers where wiling to pay more for a product that supported a good cause.

Note: Due to a lack of time and budget constraints our ethical business owner survey did not receive enough responses and the data was therefore not used in our analysis.

Introducing Lauren Taylor

We then synthesised all consumer research data by affinity mapping qualitative data into themes. We combined this with survey insights and google analytics to create the primary consumer persona of Lauren Taylor.

Research Synthesis

Lauren's Journey

Using our contextual inquiry data we mapped out Lauren's customer journey.

Introducing Nicole Bennett

We synthesised the qualitative data into themes and combined this with the Goodsmiths' previous marketing research of their business platform to create the business owner persona of Nicole Bennett.

Note: Given the limitations of our data with specifically consulting based clients we did not create a consulting client persona.

Nicole's Customer Journey

We then mapped out two customer journeys. One for her experience exploring the business and consulting homepage, the other of her experience exploring to the consumer homepage as she attempts to understand how her customer would discover her business through the platform.

Ideation

What features could we add, subtract or adjust to solve the pain points that we discovered through our research? We then prioritized the features using an MVP matrix.

Process Flows

We sketched out 3 separate task flows (consumer, business owner, consulting client) and mapped it into one combined flow. We then tested this flow out with ethical consumers in the area to ensure it’s reasonableness.

Prototype

We elected to skip to a high fidelity prototype based on time constraints and deliverables.

Based on our research here are some of the features we included in the prototype:

Mobile centric deisgn
Survey tested phrasing.
Testimonials (social proof).
Universal accessibility AAA standard colours.
Adjusted fonts for readability.
Adding illustrations and simplifying text for 'scannability'.

Prototpying

Usability Testing

We spoke to the clients that the Goodsmiths referred us to. They where marketing platform clients and consulting clients.

We asked them to explore both the consumer sections of the website and the business & consulting sections of the website.

Key insights:

Key copy was ambiguous (e.g change ‘list’ to ‘list with us’.)
The consulting content was not adequately differentiated from marketing platform content (e.g consulting testimonials were confused for marketing platform testimonials)
Finding ‘business owner’ page was still difficult to find from the consumer page
Clearer organisation of menus and categories
Clearer copy about ‘the deal’. (Business owners where still confused about what goldsmiths was offering.)
Confusion about the meaning of different icons
Icons looked like buttons but where not clickable

Prototype Iteration

We made the changes quickly based on the usability tests before presenting back our findings to Goodsmiths on the same day.