

Tools: Surveys, Interviews, Business and competitive analysis, Business model canvas, Site map, Card sorting, User flow, Use cases and scenarios, Lo-fidelity, Mid-fidelity, Prototyping and testing.
Duration: 4 days.
Technologies: Pen & paper, Sketch, Adobe XD.
Team: 3 people (Abia Karim, Rui Rocha and myself).
Introduction
The second week of our UX/UI bootcamp just started!
This week’s challenge was about empowering local businesses, so we started out by exploring the Santos neighborhood. As we were walking by Rua Poiais de São Bento, we bumped into a small shop called d’Olival Casa. We were greeted by the super welcoming owner, Helena, who told us a bit about their story.
Our client

About a year ago, Lino and Helena Beghetto, a young couple with a passion for Portugal and its wonderful traditions opened a shop called d’Olival. Their goal was to serve as a window to showcase high-quality Portuguese olive oil. A couple of months later, they decided to expand their business and open a second shop, d’Olival Casa, focused on handmade interior design and lifestyle objects.
We were really touched by how passionate they were about handcrafted Portuguese homewares and about the close relationship that they nurtured with the artisans. In fact, the shop is filled with polaroid pictures: both of Lino and Helena, as well as the artists who build the products, so that whoever buys the product knows how the artists look like!
“The artisanal element is of the utmost importance to us, which is why we display polaroid pictures of each craftsperson next to the products they have created.” — Helena Beghetto
As they are a business with a lot of potential to grow and attract more costumers, we discussed the possibility of building an e-commerce platform to increase their reach.
Research
The research for this project was interesting because the topic of acquiring handmade products is quite fascinating in itself.
We started by creating a survey which aimed to understand the experience of purchasing handmade products online. The questions focused mainly on only shopping habits and the experience of acquiring handmade artisanal products. Some important insights included the following figures:
- 76,8% of respondents have the habit of online shopping;
- 85% of respondents purchase locally because they value the products “authenticity”;
In order to deepen our insights with sweet qualitative data, we carried out interviews and were able to identify that stakeholders imagined one of the greatest challenge around building an e-commerce platform would be that because artisanal products are handmade, they’re all unique and distinct from each other. In their vision, this could potentially represent a disadvantage when it came to listing the products, adding descriptions, uploading pictures and selling them online.
However, after talking to costumers and visitors of the shop we confirmed what the survey had already indicated — clients biggest motivation for purchasing these products was precisely acquiring one-of-a-kind Portuguese items. Contrarily to what was believed, people were excited about not knowing what to expect and acquiring unique, tailor-made items.
Looking into business
Another important step of the research was identifying the main competitors. We created a list of shops selling handmade Portuguese products and built a matrix in order to compare the types of products and services that were offered.
In light of the competitor analysis, creating a Business Model Canvas was useful to help us identify the main value proposition of the brand, key activities, resources and partners, analyze customer relationships and segments, define channels, cost structures and revenue streams.

The partnerships developped between the shop owners and local artisans created a very specific type of mindset. This motto was equally present in customer relations and market segmentation.
User Persona
We proceeded to interpret the data gathered from our research through the creation of a user persona.

Hannah is visiting Lisbon from the U.S for a couple of days, and doesn’t want to leave without an item to remind her of this lovely trip.
Pains
- 🏺 She is afraid of buying something that is too delicate and might break inside her luggage during a transatlantic flight;
- 🧳 She’s concerned she has too little space in her suitcase;
- ⏳ There is still so much to do and she hopes she finds the time to go to a local shop!
Gains
- 🎁 She wants to take back a gift for her friend!
- 🎨 She would really like to support local Portuguese artists;
- 🌟 Her main goal is to bring back an item that can symbolize how much she enjoyed this trip, like a totem/reminder;
Sitemap & Card sorting
After deepening our understanding about the business’s value proposition and about our users, the next step was to envision what the sitemap for an e-commerce platform could look like.
We tested the information architecture through card-sorting methods (open and closed), which gave us valuable insight on how to improve our structure.

The card-sorting helped us decide the name of our categories, focusing primarily on “Shop”, “About Us”, and made us decide create a “News” session that included “Blog” and “Recipes”.

Low-fidelity testing
We then sketched a lo-fi prototype of the website on paper, defined a user flow that would involve purchasing a plate, and started testing with people.
The most valuable insight that we received and implemented after testing was deciding to group up “Ceramics” and “Textiles” under “Home goods”, instead of having a separate category for each.
Mid-fidelity prototype
Finally, we created our first mid-fidelity prototype. It was interesting to visualize the structure of the website on the screen. We tested some more and decided to include a “quick pay” option to facilitate the check out process.
Presentation
On Friday morning, Rui, Abia and I then presented our design process to our colleagues. Check out the slides of our final presentation:
Main learnings
- It is fundamental to understand your client, talk to the owners and learn more about the story, browse the website and talk to the store’s costumers in order to really understand their values and mission. It is only after understanding the business’ needs that ideas for solutions come about (which is why tools such as the Business Model Canvas come in handy).
- Creating the site-map and card-sorting was a bigger challenge than I expected, it’s important to have a very clear and organized mindset. However, after we were on the right track, it was super interesting. Information architecture is awesome.
- To stimulate ideation we tried methods such as Good/Bad Idea, Round Robin and just good old brainstorming. It was super cool!
- As for prototyping, it was the first time ever that we built mid-fi prototypes and used Adobe XD! I really enjoyed using this tool & am looking forward to learning more about it.

Share your thoughts on acquiring handmade products and about this project in the comments!
Credits:
Thanks to Lino and Helena for being so open and talking to us!
Thanks to Ângela Sousa for reviewing this post.
Thank you to my colleagues Rui Rocha and Abia Karim.
