A Project by Jill Dickieson & Janice Kong
The Distillery District’s website presents a great opportunity for growth in the user experience, to better match the physical experience of visiting the distillery district. We were tasked with creating a website to; build an increased interest in shopping local, supplement the sales of shops, and increase community engagement.
Design Process:
Research:
For this project our research was completed through surveys, interviews and competitive and comparative analysis.
Survey
Through the use of surveys we were able to collect a larger scope of users both local or visiting Toronto. The Survey provided qualitative data from a range of users.
Tourists Insights
- Found it hard to navigate the Distillery District.
- Didn’t know about the history but like that there was a story.
- Great Atmosphere — Artistic and historic.
Visitors Insights
- Transit is a pain.
- Hard to Navigate.
- Don’t know about events.
- Want to know what other people are doing.
- Not digitally engaged.
Interviews:
After speaking to vendors at the distillery district it became clear that the area was divided into two sections. Artists who were under the Artscape community and the Shop owners who fall directly under CityScape who runs the Distillery District.
Vendor Insights
- Positive towards new ways to improve sales.
- Atmosphere plays a large role in their business.
- Big Events have positive effects on business.
Artist Insights
- Hidden away and forgotten about.
- Big events don’t draw purchasing crowds.
- Customers are not engaged digitally.
- Don’t want to spend time doing non-creative things.
- Feel online presence could be improved.
Competitive/ Comparative Analysis:
Through competitive analysis of various Markets and Online Artesian shops, a better understanding was gained, of what the Distillery Districts competitors are offering, both digitally and physically.
Affinity Diagram:
With the interview and survey responses completed we started grouping answers and feedback together into categories to create an affinity diagram. This helped to decipher the key pain points of users and vendors.
Primary Persona:
Kate represents local visitors who live in Toronto or the greater Toronto area. They want to socialize and experience local areas.
Secondary Persona:
Luke represents tourists visiting Toronto who are looking to experience the city and learn more about the history of the city.
User Stories:
As an Artist, I want better exposure targeted to the right people so my sales can improve.
As a visitor, I want to see what other people are doing at the distillery district so I can experience it too
Define Problem:
The user struggles to stay digitally engaged with the Distillery’s District’s offerings and events.
Plan:
When planning, during the design process we used useful tools such as user journeys, user flow diagrams and storyboarding to help provide context and get a better understanding of the user.
User Journey:
The user journey help to define key pain points in the users path for the current website. This gave guidance of what specific pain points can be addressed.
For this user journey the user is following the path to find information on upcoming events. In order to find an event of interest the user must endure quite a few pain points.
User Flow:
The user flow was used to help understand the path the user would take when using the new website. The main user flow was focused on the user finding a product to purchase from a Distillery District.
Storyboard:
The Storyboard was used to help give some visual context to the new user journey. It depicts a scenario in which the user wants to do something new and different with their friend one weekend. After visiting the Distillery Districts website they are able to get the information they need to attend the event.
Design:
When starting the design process I sketched the wireframes by hand, before bring them into sketch and creating digital wireframes.
V1 Wireframe:
Once the rough wire framing was done I was able to bring it into sketch to create a digital wireframe.
V1 Prototype:
Click here to view the project `P2_Prototype_V1`
This prototype brought to you by InVisionApp
invis.io
Testing:
Testing for version one of the prototype involved giving the user two tasks to complete based on the user path scope addressed;
- Find a women’s dress to add to your cart and review it.
- Find info on and event to attend.
Results:
Testing brought to light many user issues with general navigation and understanding what to do and where to go next. A few of the key issues that came up while testing the user path are;
- Homepage CTA’s
- Homepage navigation
- Breadcrumbs
- Clearer path
- Shop to Shop Online
V1 vs. V2:
The homepage ‘call to actions’ were refined and clarified. This allowed us to remove redundancies and make it easier for the user to navigate more efficiently.
The shop online section was also refined and simplified so that user can filter rather then being directed to a new page. The Shopping cart was also moved into the main navigation bar at the top of the page to allow the user to move from the online shop to other pages without losing their cart. Breadcrumbs were also added to allow the user to understand were they are and allow them to quickly move back to another section.
The events page was not easy to use and it was not visible or clear that an event could be clicked on to get more information. This was addressed by adding a hyperlink to each event.
Design Solution:
Through user testing we were able to determine some pain points that needed to be addressed in order to make the user journey as effortless a possible. With our second prototype we were able amend these main pain points. However given the opportunity more user testing could still greatly improve the user experience.
V2 Prototype:
Click here to view the project `P2_Prototype_V2`
This prototype brought to you by InVisionApp
invis.io
Conclusion:
With Version one and two prototypes, we were able to address the main pain points for the user; finding events, seeing what others are doing and making, and viewing Distillery District products available online to cut out the pain point of travel many users experienced. However, the scope was not able to encompass all pain points during the testing phase in our design process. I believe that the Artist’s section would benefit from user testing to better understand how to engage the user and artists, as this was also an area of concern that was clear in the research.
Summary :
Overall the design process brought to light some interesting pain points that the current Distillery Districts website was not addressing. Through user testing we were able to refine and simplify the user journey.
