How we validated the MVP for ‘You Make It’
Case Study | Client Project at General Assembly
The Client
The vision of You Make It is to revolutionise the design and manufacture of furniture through an online marketplace.
Their current proposition describes their model in 3 steps:
- Post It: Describe your idea and launch your design contest
- Design It: Designers view your contest and respond with a proposal
- Make It: Manufacturers tender bids with variable prices and turn around times to have your product come to life.
Their business model can be likened to that of 99 designs, but for furniture. Take a look at their short explainer video here.
We were asked to refine their MVP based on user research and deliver a high-fidelity prototype for desktop.
As a guiding principle to begin our process we distilled the essence of You Make It into one statement:
The Challenge
The expected outcome of this sprint was to answer the following questions:
What a designer journey looks like?
What a designer/maker journey looks like?
What problems do they experience that we can solve?
Finally, how can we build a layered system that allows them to collaborate?
Discovery Stage
We kicked off the discovery stage by sending a screener survey out to the client’s network of designers and makers through their partner Designer’s Block as well as our own network. Our response looked like this:
Discovering the designer’s and designer-makers pain points
Though we only had 2% makers, we had many designers ready to be interviewed. We interviewed over 12 participants and these were the key insights:
Roles are blurred
The roles of a designer, maker and designer-maker are blurred as they don’t think of themselves as purely ‘makers’ or ‘designers’,
The skills they have means they fall into all 3 categories, which could explain the 2% response of makers. This key finding invalidated the clients current sign-up process of 3 separate sign-up interfaces for each user type, leading to the next insight:
Most designers are multi-disciplinary
When asked which type of design they are involved in, the field of design spanned across: product design, architecture, fashion, graphic design, jewellery as well as furniture. This meant that each individual had a myriad of skills that their current field doesn’t allow them to fully express.
When asked about collaboration…
100% of participants collaborated with an individual who was an expert in another discipline.
This collaboration didn’t give importance to the titles ‘designer/maker/designer-maker’, it gave more importance to their expertise in a particular skill, which was key as it guided feature prioritisation in the design process.
When asked what they look for in a ‘maker’…
I need someone who:
“is willing to innovate”
“is passionate about their craft”
“can work with a specific material”
“is reliable”
“has attention to detail”
And the question that revealed the designers pain points…
Currently, there isn’t a good digital platform to find makers and interact with.
So, where are all the makers?
Contextual inquiry
With a 2% maker response from the survey, we weren’t satisfied so we headed down to the London Artisan (a market where makers showcase and sell their work) at the Truman Brewery. We met some awesome makers and interviewed them about their process.
It turned out that the makers we found, also design their own products putting them in the category of all 3 users. We were able to interview 6 in total and these were the key findings:
Their products had strong stories behind them that ultimately get lost on platforms they use such as Etsy and Instagram.
As well as the designers, they too have many skills they can’t showcase due to their limited access to resources and network, so if they make bespoke ceramics people assume that’s all they do, they won’t know they are also amazing at woodwork, for example.
Going back to our research goals, in order to improve the current designer/maker journey, we needed to find out how they interact once they find each other.
Consolidating our interview findings into an affinity map, the key ingredients for great collaboration are:
- Understanding and aligning each others vision and process
- Understanding that the process is design-led initially and shifts to being maker-led
- Proximity
- Understanding design limitations
- Leveraging skills to push boundaries
User Personas
Elliott is our main persona, he is a furniture designer looking to increase his built projects as he has many designs in his portfolio that are unrealised. Our user flow for the final prototype focuses on Elliott’s journey finding a maker to help him achieve this, in this case he finds our second persona Sarah, an expert in wood searching for designers to collaborate with.
Let’s break down Elliott’s current journey
As you can see, the process of choosing a maker is the most difficult part of Elliott’s journey as it contains the most tasks.
Re-defining the MVP
Problem Statement
It is difficult for designers and makers to find the right person to work with
The Solution / MVP
Elliott goes on to You Make It and types in what he is looking for based on skill and location.
He get’s matched with top makers based on his search criteria, then browses the profiles. He’s interested in Sarah’s so he direct messages her and begins communicating.
Once the communication phase begins, they are left to their own devices to find out if they can align their vision, then moving on to the collaboration phase where they have access to in-chat collaboration tools, with the goal of creating a final product that gets sold on the platform.
Feature Prioritisation + Design Studio with the Client
We created a feature prioritisation map based on the research showing the essentials that You Make It needed, which we then conducted design studios around.
We began the first prototype based of a combination of our research as well as You Make It’s existing model of ‘Uploading a brief’.
The flow begins with ‘Start a Project’, the user is then taken through an onboarding process describing how it works, then a natural language style form asks for location and skill/material specifics. The user is then asked to upload as much information as possible.
Less really is more
User Testing Feedback
“I don’t understand why I’m going through all these steps and I don’t know what to expect at the end.”
“I don’t want to upload my sketches before I’m sure I have found a maker I like and he/she has agreed to collaborate.”
This approach aimed to align the maker/designer vision but the overall process required more commitment than the user was willing to give.
The user is searching for suitable makers in a particular expertise and then wants to decide whether they want to communicate further or not.
Yes, good briefs require as much information as possible but timing is key. The user shouldn't feel forced to give more than they want to at any given time.
We did receive positive feedback on:
The natural language form
Collaboration/Mark-up tool
We went through more iterations testing, refining and repeating as we got closer to the focal point. This diagram from Sketching User Experiences explains our design process:
Low — Mid Fidelity Prototype
Exploring suitable makers happens right at the beginning of the flow. The maker profile sign-up was extremely important to respond to the designer’s requirements. We went through several iterations which we were now ready to test.
Usability Testing
We went back to London Artisan to test our prototype with makers. The prototype was successful but the iterations to be made were based around:
- Pie chart interactive element was just eye-candy as users didn’t understand it
- ‘Collaboration Mode’ in the chat section wasn’t easily understood
User Interface Design
Final Digital Prototype — the client asked us to take a look at their branding, re-designing their logo and typography. Below is the result!
