An E-Commerce Twist to the Kensington Market Experience

This case study reflects upon my second UX design challenge at RED Academy. The base of this project was to create an e-commerce website for Kensington Market.

The Opportunity

For this challenge, my team and I had to focus in on Kensington Market and conduct research that would enable us to create a website that provided a pathway for online shopping, while also increasing community engagement.

Research

The research started with creating interviews for two sets of users within Kensington Market: the vendors and the shoppers. The purpose of the interviews was to help my team and I get an idea of who both parties were; what their individual goals are as a shopper and a vendor; why they are situated in the market or why they visit; and their overall thoughts and feelings towards having an e-commerce website and what they’d like to see if there was one.

The Shoppers

After surveying a total of thirty shoppers, three prominent points became established:

1. Kensington Market attracts people from all over the world.
2. The shoppers value the cultural experience, its unique offerings and want to support the small businesses that exist within the community.
3. The majority of shoppers prefer the in-person experience rather than having an online shopping version of it.

Based on the findings, we created two personas that reflected these views:

The third point created some complications for this project. As the objective was to create an e-commerce website, we had to find an entry point that would encourage shoppers to use the website, but since they were not interested in this idea, the question now became “If the shoppers are not interested in shopping Kensington online, how do we attract them otherwise?”

The Vendors

On the other hand, we interviewed a total of eighteen vendors. This created three prominent points based on this perspective:

1. The vast majority of vendors spend absolutely nothing on marketing.
2. More than half of the percentage of vendors use social media to promote their business and products.
3. Most of the vendors feel positively towards an e-commerce website to promote their business.

In order to best position the website in the eye of the vendors, we asked them what they want out of this website. They answered:

• Easy usability
• Information regarding their business, the market, and its events
• To have a wide outreach

So with the wants of the vendors in mind, along with the thoughts of the shoppers, we would add a twist to this e-commerce website. Rather than creating a website that sells the products of the vendors online, we decided to create something that immerses our users into the Kensington experience, both online and in real life, allowing them to explore in a way that’s tailored to their interests and needs.

The vendors and shoppers of the market were interested in a website that provided them with information about the market and its businesses. So, we set up something that got the users interested in the market and provided one place where they can find the information necessary. However, we also set it up in such a way that snippets of the experience was shown, so that users would be eager to check it out in person through a tour. Thus, establishing the “e-commerce” part of the website.

Planning

This usability of this website was simple enough. The user would be able to explore through the website, whether they had a specific store in mind that they wanted to check out or wanted a general overview of Kensington Market, then based on that, they’d book a tour of their interest.

To help us better establish the needs of the users, we also created user stories based on the personas shown earlier.

Tiana the Traveller
As a first time tourist in Toronto, I want to visit a new unique place so that I can have a great time.

Oscar the Older Vendor
As a business store owner in Kensington for the past 20 years, I want to bring more people into my store so that I can have more free time with my family.

Liam the Local
As a local, I want to visit local stores so that I can help my community and have a great experience.
As a local, I want to visit local stores so that I can buy unique goods and save some money.

Design: Final Prototype

Click here to view the project `P2 Kensington Market - V2`

Usability Testing

We used a set list of task-oriented contextual inquiry followed by a post-experience questionnaire to help us create the best potential website for Kensington Market.

Prototype V1

As any design process goes, our version 1 came with complications. To summarize:

• The homepage needs to give a better overview of the website itself
• The navigation bar needed to be more user friendly and consistent
• The overall layout on each of the category pages needed to be fixed
• The store page also had a layout that needed to be fixed overall, as well as an insufficient amount of textual information
• More CTAs were needed to prompt the users to move forward after booking information and completing the purchase

After having modified these complications, we moved forward to V2 — the final product.

Summary

Kensington Market is always growing and always changing. With old vendors continuing their legacies and new vendors grasping at the popularity of the community, Kensington reflects a diverse community in Toronto. Although it doesn’t look like e-commerce has a place right now, future opportunities for the idea will arise. However, after experiencing the market and its people within the two weeks of working on this project, my team and I definitely hope that the true character of the market remains.