UX Case Study — Birdie 2.0 Responsive Website Redesign
Product: MVP prototype of Birdie 2.0 — a responsive website that provides trusted recommendations for restaurants by capitalizing on a user’s personal network of family and friends
My Role: UX Researcher, UX Designer, Project Manager, Visual Designer
UX Team: Myself, Anneliese Klein, Frannie Laks, and Ellen Li
Duration: 2.5 Weeks
BirdieWorld.com was started and is owned by Lauren Rosenthal who was our stakeholder and main point of contact throughout the project. We also worked with her developer Paul Hiatt, as well as a few members from the Birdie Junior Board.
Specifically, the client asked that we provided a new design recommendation to improve on not only the UI but the overall user flow of the current site. Also, while the client is focused on the utilitarian use of the product, they are interested in potential ideas and recommendations for a few additional features to incorporate into the Birdie 2.0 version for the users. Another focus of ours was to show the value of the platform on the frontside, rather than a person have to use it a few times to understand its worth.
Research — Exploration
At the beginning of this project, our team was given the assumption of the current problem as it exists is that people do not trust the online reviews on competitors, such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, as they are random people that the users do not necessarily trust. Another assumption is that many people are keeping lists of their current recommendations and restaurants they would like to try in various places and formats, including mobile phone notes app, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, email threads, and mentally. With these assumptions in mind, we jumped right into the research phase to see if either of these could be validated as well as find as other problems that are currently existing within this marketplace.
Our team started with competitor research. The restaurant and bar review space is currently an incredibly crowded marketplace. In addition to the more well-known companies that we included on the competitive matrix, there are also dozens of other startup apps in this space such as Rex, Salt, Spot, ChefsFeed, Truffle, and more. Lauren mentioned an app “graveyard” in this space as well where many attempts to enter the market have failed and gone to die. With all of the competitors provides a challenge to figure out Birdie’s differentiation point and opportunity to stand out. This space is also extremely feature heavy which you can see through the feature analysis of the competitors. This helped us find which features will keep Birdie competitive while also finding features that could help make it stand out from the crowd.
After the competitor research, we conducted usability testing on the Birdie website as it exists currently. This allowed us to point out the usability and utility problems that may already exist within the platform. We tested the current site on 6 users total (3 female and 3 male). Some of the findings we had from these usability tests include:
Utility
- 5/6 expected to experience website’s value before signing up
- 5/6 expected to see list of recommended restaurants on
home page5/6 expected to experience website’s value before signing up
Usability
- 5/6 confused around Birdie’s language (Feed, Library, etc)
- 100% error rate when adding restaurant to their “to try” list
Next, we sent out a screener survey to begin recruiting candidates for user interviews. We received 81 responses in which 46 matched the criteria of having aBachelor’s degree or higher and lived in one of these 6 metro areas: New York City, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia. This criteria was set because the platform will first be focused on growing within the top cities and travel destinations throughout the U.S. From this screener survey, we conducted 16 user interviews. Three of these were from the Birdie Junior Board which are current users of the platform and advisors for Lauren. The given demographic breakdown for the platform was that users were 70% female and 30% male which was then further validated through the user interviews. These interviews also helped us to focus the target demographic age as well.
Synthesis — Compilation
The next phase that we entered was synthesizing all of the rich qualitative data we collected through the user interviews. We started with affinity mapping by using likes, dislikes, behaviors, and quotes from the current and potential users that we spoke with. We created the following “I” statements which helped us to embody and empathize with the user.
We also quantified some of the qualitative data collected, including the following:
- 93% (13 of 14) currently don’t write reviews
- 86% (13 of 15) highly value their friends’ recommendations
- 64% (9 of 14) keep a list of restaurants in various formats
We also collected and found out the following behaviors about the user in which we could focus on capitalizing on rather than trying to change. The user:
- does not feel obligated to leave reviews
- depends on their friends’ recommendations
- shares and ask for lists of recommendations
After finding out all of the above about our user, we noticed two different groups of users that exist within the Birdie platform — those heavily creating the content versus those more focused on consuming the content. This helped us in the creation of two different archetypes: the Insider and the Enthusiast. The Insider loves exploring and discovering new restaurants while the Enthusiast is dependent upon recommendations from the insider.
Using these two archetypes we then created our primary persona who is considered an Insider and our secondary persona who is considered an Enthusiast. We had been given one persona from the client originally, and while we did use this as a baseline we incorporated many updates to it due to our user research, and then we also created the secondary persona.
After synthesizing all of the data from the research phase and keeping our two personas in mind, we defined the following problem statement:
When choosing a restaurant, urban young professionals struggle to access their trusted network’s recommendations in order to find one that fits their needs. How might we provide a space where users can find relevant and valuable recommendations in a way that is engaging and efficient?
Ideate + Design — Conception
Next, we took all of our research into the design phase. We started with two rounds of design studio as a team, as well as a third round with our stakeholder and a current Junior Board member.
After the three rounds of design studio, we synthesized the dozens of feature ideas and prioritized them using a MoSCow feature prioritization map. We also came up with a short list of specified goals for the platform and the features that would correspond with these.
User Goals
- Find reliable recommendations more efficiently
- Make your list of notes about restaurants easily accessible
- Sharing recommendations with friends easily
Features
- Add a “All Friends Chirps” button directly on home page
- House both saved places and all chirps on “My Lists” page
- Add a share to text and email feature that allows selection of specific restaurants
Next, we created four task flows individually that helped us decide on which pages should be created and built out first. We also did several rounds of hand sketches as a group, as well as a storyboarding exercise to align all of our ideas for page layout before jumping into the digital creation of wireframes.
Usability + Usefulness
After finishing the digital creation of wireframes in Sketch and linking the first prototype in Invision, we began usability testing. In total, we conducted four rounds of usability tests with 18 users total — 5 users each in the first two rounds and 4 users each in the third and fourth rounds. Overall throughout all four rounds of usability tests, some of the major findings on utility and usability included:
Utility
- 3 of 5 found the home page crowded and not helpful in completing tasks
- 4 of 5 liked the share feature to text
- 4 of 5 wanted to see all friends collections at once
Usability
- 3 of 5 confused by “My Collection”
- 3 of 5 could not find their list of “to try” saved restaurants
- 4 of 5 could not save their restaurants to their to try list
Findings + Iteration
These usability tests led to a creation of four different prototypes, each with continued improvements based on the prior usability test. Our iterations were mainly focused on the overall user flow, as well as the home and the lists pages. On the home page, we were specifically focused on providing the value to the user upfront, as well as focusing on the trust existing within the platform. On the lists page, we were focused on how to make it most understandable and useful for the user.
Also, during the usability tests we kept track of a few KPIs, including task success rate and the error rate specifically on someone saving a restaurant to their “To Try” or “Saved Places” list. Our goal was to decrease the error rate from the 100% on the current platform to 0% on the new prototype which we were successfully able to achieve through our design iterations. Another goal was to have the task success rate for all users to be 100% which we were also able to achieve.
To view the Birdie 2.0 prototype, click here.
Conclusion + Next Steps
Upon the completion of this project, our team is extremely excited to continue to use and follow the future of Birdie. It is a platform that we have found the need for through our user research and have improved upon through prototyping and usability tests. While we focused primarily on the MVP creation during these three weeks, we have many other feature recommendations including matching and suggestion users through self-selected tastes, as well as including simple and intentional notifications in some iteration. These features would need to be created and tested as well.
We also suggest taking the following next steps to move forward with this project:
- Finish creating and conduct usability tests on the desktop designs
- Research and test on current filter options
- Follow the feature rollout plan to develop Birdie 2.0
- Additional usability testing on 2.0 mobile and desktop once it is developed
Overall, working with this client and platform was extremely useful and taught me many valuable things for my future as a UX designer. It was an interesting platform and industry to dig deeper into, learn more about, and improve upon using the trusted networks of family and friends to more efficiently keep track of and find recommendations.
