What I have done:
Market Research, Interview, Competitive Analysis, Personas Creation, Ideation, UI Design, UX Design, Usability Testing, Prototyping
Tools:
Pen & Paper, Sketch, Invision, Photoshop
Sector:
Vitamins & Supplements
00. Introduction
Overview
Scope and Focus
O’life Natural is an online natural supplement company for both adults and kids. O’life Natural products developed together with a team of health practitioners, and enzyme therapy specialists and work together with selected partners in the procurement and production of raw materials. All supplements are 100% vegan and 100% natural ingredients. They also have different products -weight loss, performance & energy, mood, energy, sleep & stress, anti aging & skin care, digestive health, bones, joints, muscles and more.
The Problem
I have been contacted by O’life Natural to help them to enhance their existing online business since currently they only have a very old fashioned website, with a lot technical issue, low sales volume, lack of design aesthetic and also outdated products. They don’t want to keep anything that they currently have, and want fresh, modern and new website. For now, they want to start with a new logo and an e-commerce responsive website where they can sell their products online.
Project Background
O’life Natural was planning on launching a new e-commerce website in 3-5 months and looking for a streamlined, well-thought-out user experience to match. 2017 was projected to be the first year where most of the sales came through health practitioner and third party sales reps. As soon as stakeholders seen the opportunity that it can be improved through online sales, they have decided to create an e-commerce website. But the website created in very short time and without any research and user insight so company struggled with managing and making online sales.
O’life Natural wants to make a very strong comeback, and for that they will need a next-level user experience for their e-commerce sales. Company has their products also on Amazon but they do not want to risk putting all business plan on Amazon.
Although an Amazon sales are getting better day by day. Instead, O’life Natural wants to start with a responsive e-commerce website that user an either use desktop or mobile version to make the purchase products.
Solution
High-Level Design Goals and Objectives
- Design a responsive website (desktop, tablet, and mobile) that covers the main functionality: buy products, search products by health interests and engage with social media accounts.
- Design a logo for the company that is modern and neutral enough to attract all types of people and health interests.
- Add additional functionalities to the website, such as a Sales Reps. Login for specific country or region. Existing sales reps can login to their account and see their sales, commissions and payments. People (sales people and also social media influencers) can also register to be a new sales rep for specific country or region.
Key Features
- The website needs to be responsive so users can access it from any device (laptop, tablet and mobile, mainly)
- The website should be able to show products for all existing categories-weight loss, performance & energy, mood, energy, sleep & stress, anti aging & skin care, digestive health, bones, joints, muscles
- The website should allow people to filter products easily by health interests so people can narrow down the options.
- Sales reps registration and login page.
Project Deliverables & Planning
01. Discovery
Market Research
- The global dietary supplements market size was estimated at USD 115.06 billion in 2018. It is expected to expand 7.8% during the forecast period.
- According to a new research the dietary supplements market is anticipated to reach over USD 349.4 billion by 2026.
- Consumer attitude is very positive regarding dietary supplements with added health and wellness benefits.
- On the basis of end user, the market is segmented into adults, geriatric, pregnant women, children, and infants. Adults were the major consumer of dietary supplements, accounting for 48.3% of global revenue share in 2018.
- Over the counter dietary supplements held the leading market share of over 73.7% in terms of revenue in 2018.
We hypothesized that we’d accomplish our goal by adhering to a few tenets:
First, we needed to make it clear that there is a community of people looking for new friends based on an activity and events.
Second, in order to find new friends we wanted to give different list of activities based on users interest and also the geo location.
Third, make finding new friends as easy as possible tapping a button.
Understanding the landscape a little better, my next research initiative was to interview event based app users to hear about their experiences.
In order to conduct research properly and design effectively within a timeframe, we have decided to focus on users between the ages of 18 and 44 who are more likely to utilize technology when they are searching for their new friends. With the target audience defined, I then used 3 research methods to help me gain a solid understanding of the problem space properly. The 3 methods including, competitive analysis, survey and interviewing with people who previously used Meetup, Tinder and Facebook Events.
So, all those researches will help me to answer some of the questions as following:
Competitive Analysis
- What are some of the existing solutions out there to help users to look for a good match?
- Can user find a good match with ease using existing solutions?
- What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of the existing solutions?
Survey
- We need to get more quantitative data to understand giving behavior of users.
- What are they looking for and what make the process easier for users?
Interview with 16 Candidates
- Why did they want to find a new friends?
- What do they look into when they are searching for a new friend?
- What helped them to determine if their new friend match with their interest?
- What were some of the pain points they encounter in their search & finding process?
- What were some of their favorite parts in their search & one-on-one activity process?
02. Define
Key Findings
Understanding the landscape a little better, my next research initiative was to interview event based app users to hear about their experiences.
We interviewed 16 people between the ages of 18 and 44. Mostly female. All interviewees had previously used Meetup, Facebook Events or Eventbrite.
Early pilots of this product yielded the following results:
-
- 85% of participants mentioned that the app like a mash up of a dating app (like tinder or bumble) with a social group activity app
- 75% of participants mentioned that the app might help finding new friends new to an areas or traveling to different cities.
- 90% of participants want to use the app regularly.
Persona
First I put together a persona that captured the characteristics of the user to design for. I created 2 deliverables to convey the persona— a persona overview, an empathy map, and a storyboard walking through a finding friend by the persona.
One key takeaway from research is that experience finding new friends and going an activity with someone new can really make big differences in people’s life. In order to ensure I am designing for friend finder effectively, I synthesized my findings into personas that represent my two different user groups: first-time friend finders and users previously used different apps. These two different personas both want to look for the best friend that match with their lifestyle and activity interests.
What They’re Saying
03. Ideation
With the research done, I moved on to brainstorming to come up various ideas that can help our users to minimize their pain points and amplifying their gain points in the search & find friend process so that they can find a friend that matches with their lifestyle and activity interest smoothly.
In the process, I diverged and came up with 5 different product features that explored design of touch points. Such as:
1- Explore Activities
2- Join Activity
3- Find the Best Match
4- Smart Post
5- Review Profiles
I sketched out some low fidelity wireframes to help me with planning:
04. Design
I then moved on to designing with Sketch & prototyping it with InVision. Actually prototyping it helped me to understand how some of the interactions designed in first place may not work well and helped me to iterate. Here is the final user flow generated.
Explore Activities
Explore recommended activities around you or choose the best activity that fits your interest. Find something very new to you and try something different.
Join Activity
Take a look at all those activities on Gowime. Is there one that interests you? What are you waiting for then? Send a request to join that activity. Have some fun already!
Find the Best Match
Search people based on their interests and activities that are common with you. Find like-minded people around you and explore new places with activities that you and your new friend are both interested in.
Smart Post
With smart posting, you can easily choose the category of your interest, add date, time and location of your activity and post it. You can then let people with similar activity interests find and join your activity.
Review Profiles
With Gowime you can explore people’s profiles to know more about them. See their photos, find out their interests and take a peek at their hobbies. Are they the real friend material for you? You go and decide.
05. Evaluation
After the high fidelity design process, we conducted guerilla testing with 12 users and also usability testing. Users are all in their 20-30s and they are looking for a new friend based on activity interest. We asked participants to complete the following tasks in the usability testing.
1- Create New Account
2- Search
3- Post New Activity (Smart Post)
4- Review Profile
5- Explore New Activities around you
6- Search near by Friends
After completion of the tasks, we asked our participants to rate the prototype on the scale of 1-10 according to satisfaction of use and how likely they use the app when they are searching for a new friend. The results we obtained were:
Satisfaction of use
8/10
Likelihood of use
7/10
Direction for Iteration
80% of our users mentioned that, this idea is a great alternative to dating website but definetly not friend finding app. Based on same interests, people can use Gowime as a new dating app. This result was not an asamption at all. So, after reviewing entire process and feedback all team tought that we need to iterate the entire concept not just design, as a new “dating app”.
06. Reflection
We had a lot of fun working on this project. As a UX designer, my goal is to understand user’s pain point, get the user insights and than make a difference in the world with my designs. Thinking how the outcome of this project took us to the different direction was absolutly not in our mind.
So, the reality is, if you can not measure, you ca nnot manage.
Few takeaways from this research:
1- Do not underestimate the user’s pain point.
2- Data, data, data.
3- Focus Groups would be great to start this user research.
4- We need to think the problem in a bigger scale.
5- Lonliness is a reality and still needs real solutions.
Make new friends. Be active. Become happy.
We want every person to be happy and find new friends while doing things they are most comfortable with and like.
We want every person to be happy and find new friends while doing things they are most comfortable with and like.