Bringing E-commerce to Kensington Market
My second project, and I was super excited to dive into an eclectic mix of cultural diversity and unique art; Kensington Market in Downtown Toronto. Little did I know about this artistic and one of the most happening streets in Toronto before this project and today, I am a big fan of it.
Market Brief
Honestly, a visit to the Kensington market is like a heritage trip around the globe. Today the neighbourhood is one of Toronto’s most diverse areas. The area is stuffed with food stores specializing in a wide variety of farm produce, meat and fish. It is also a peculiar destination if you’re looking for rare spices, cheese shops and bakeries. A lot of stores in here also sell new and used fashionable clothing and offer extensive discounts thereby making it a hot market for teenagers and college students. Decorative walls, artsy ambience and happy vibes fill up the marketplace all around the year.
In the recent years, the market has witnessed a pragmatic rise in the number of vintage styled restaurants, coffee shops and eateries, somewhat replacing the old and withered ethnic shops.
Opportunity
Right off the bat, I didn’t find the existing website of Kensington market quite appealing as it doesn’t really talk to consumers as does the physical market. Also, I noticed that the site had complex navigation and was not user-friendly. Even though in business for years, most retailers had little or no online presence on the website. So, definitely needs improvement in terms of usability, functionality and aesthetics.
UX Objective
The objective of this project was to leverage E-commerce landscape and find a solution to help Kensington Market stand at par with the exploding online retail platforms as well as propel interest amongst people in shopping local and enhancing the overall Kensington community engagement.
The Process
Research
My user research started with a casual visit to the market. Me with my team mates Katie and Gabe went out on the streets of Kensington market — took random pictures, had a basic conversation with some retailers, students and even tourists. The goal was to get a real-time feel of the market and develop a better understanding of how the retail market is performing and what needs improvement. At one point, we decided to split and interview shopkeepers individually. Surprisingly, while a few of them were happy to learn that we’ll be redesigning the original website, most of them didn’t feel like it would make any difference to them. At this moment we realized that it wasn’t just a good web design that we needed but a product that solves two problems for Kensington market —
- Gives significant web presence to shop owners who have seen dropping sales due to rise in affordable E-shopping experience.
- Increases physical traffic in the market to boost sales for shop owners who wouldn’t have benefitted from online marketing.
As we returned, our next tool was a local survey to learn more about potential users — Who they were? What was their age group? What were their needs? Why did they come to Kensington Market? What is that they liked or disliked about the market?
We had the survey posted on Facebook, Reddit and Quora and received 120 responses from different people. From the survey results, we noticed a huge diversity in the occupation and interests of people who responded. Some of the most common themes were — art, photography, music and design with dining and shopping being the topmost reasons of why 77% and 80% of them respectively, visited Kensington Market. We put together all big numbers and information on the whiteboard and began to group all common and related data. At this point, we could see a hazy picture of two or more user personas that were coming up.
Regardless, we still wanted to talk to some frequent visitors in-person and dig more into the “why?” factors and so, together we created a second round of questions and this time, more subject specific and user-centered. Gabe interviewed 2 college students and I interviewed some elderly people I met on the street car from King to Spadina station. Considering that it was hard for most older people to walk down the crowded streets of Kesington market, I purposely had a question about if they knew what Pedestrian Sunday was? Some people had no clue about what was it but fortunately, those who knew about it, really liked it.
It was time to do a quick feature prioritization and do some testing. Each one of us had our own ideas put on paper first and collaborated to get our first low-fidelity prototype.
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
We went out to users again to have our product tested. People really liked our approach of creating an online Kensington community to keep them up to date about the events, shopping trends, pedestrian friday’s, discovering new shops and the weekly spotlights. They agreed, that is something that will prompt them to visit the market more often.
Summary
While this is what we designed in a two week design sprint, there’s a lot more research and planning that goes into the project before redesigning the platform and making it ready to use. I am happy with what I accomplished in the given time frame and given more time, I would definitely love to dive deeper into user experience of vendors, locals and tourists and create an improved and easy to use interface for all.
