UX : The Biocoop puzzle
How I completed my new UX challenge, 5 days intense UX study, from research to low-fi prototyping
BRIEF: design an online shopping experience for a food company of our choosing. I choose Biocoop, an ethical brand that sells organic products.
Why ? Biocoop is the european first organic farming network. All the shops have their own owner an work as independent structures.
Yet, Biocoop growth isn’t developed to its fullest potential.
How come ? Biocoop doesn’t have an online shopping experience yet.
I had 5 days to research (survey & interview), ideate, define, prototype, test, refine and present an e-grocery solution tackling Biocoop’s users issues.
First step : Make your work valuable
If you don’t know where you’re heading to, fake it.
My friends and I dedicated one hour brainstorming, wording and drawing our fake agency. I like to think that when you feel organized, legitimate, professional you get organized, legitimate, professional.
Here are some of the items we put on paper. Adding value easily 😃.
Second Step : Get to know your industry
Dive into the industry, get hints from where you are before knowing where to go.
Spending a few hours understanding the current branding, the competitors & mapping our strategic positioning is one of the many keys to understand our users.
What I learned here : Biocoop offers local products. They are traceable, organic and the producers are selected by the shops’ owners.
If Biocoop shopping experience was made possible online, they could compete with the giants of the food industry; not only creating a unique expericence for the organic lovers but giving the organic lifestyle the visibility it deserves.
Third Step : You are not your user
Understand your user. Why does he shop here ? How ? What are his expectations ? Are they fulfilled ? Why ?
I made a online survey (125 answers in a few hours) and met the users coming out of the closest Biocoop.
Among things, I learned that at least 98,3% of the persons surveyed had previously bought organic food. 45% already ordered their grocery online, but that it was as a convenience more than as a regular basis, with only that their main interest was their health and traceability of the products they consume.
To enrich our survey data I arranged the ideas with an affinity diagrams, fix an average user and built a persona to keep in mind his goals and frustrations, tried mind mapping and empathy mapping.
Persona main pain point : I buy organic food but I don’t know where it is produced. The labels don’t really legitimate the product to me. I want to trace it, support local & collaborative economy.
Fourth step : Fall in love with your problem
Problem Statement : How might we create a Biocoop e-shop putting into perspective its products origin ?
I wanted to solve the persona anxiety regarding its consumption and make a strong value proposition, far from the standardized e-shops industrially developed.
Fifth step : Ideate Ideate Ideate
The ideation step was really intense : Round Robin, MindMapping, Brainstorming, Worst Ideas, Crazy 8.
The most complex part is to prioritize the features you want to be displayed.
I used the MOSCOW method. Here are my must have :
1° Get infos about the product
2° Get infos about the producer
Among the other ideas I came up with, was the creation of an agri-blockchain to enhance traceability and its security. It was categorized as nice to have; implicitly saying we’ll do it if we can get funded for it.
Sixth Step : Sketching the architecture
Getting close !!
The architecture allows me to make my ideas technically understandable before building the first prototypes. It is an effective way to communicate, with your potential stakeholders and your own team.
Most of the architecture changes with the first iterations. I like to compare my first sitemaps and userflows with the last one to measure and emphasize the progress I’ve made.
Last Step : Prototype !!!!
Here we are. I tested the prototype with 8 different users, improving the flow at each iteration. The user feedback was really enthusiastic and the suggestions really added value to the solution.
Here is a short video showing the prototype.
Well, it is a low-fi it, it couldn’t get all colored and crazy but it looks like a good start isn’t it ?
I am glad I succeeded focusing on one key point to build this prototype. There isn’t only one solution but this one seemed the most legitimate based on the user research, the testing and so on. It has been a great experience for me, I feel more and more familiar with the UX design frameworks and methods.
I’ll get back to you in two weeks with the UI part !!
Hope the end-solution will be a blast 😃
Cheers,
Pierre
