Research, Research, and More Research: MHCI Capstone Week 3–4
Welcome to our workspace!
The numo MHCI Capstone team has spent the last 2 weeks adventuring deep into a forest of both discovery and exploratory research. Based on the current decor of our project room, some would say this metaphorical “forest” could also be taken very literally. We wanted to surround ourselves in a calm, relaxed environment which helps to both foster and induce a “flow state” while we work on individual tasks and discuss work during our meetings.
We also felt like redecorating the room would strengthen our team bond, as we each took part in creating and shaping the room which we would evidently spend the most amount of hours in while on-campus. We each took part in designing our forest, ensuring each team member had a say in where our decorations would go. After our decoration process, we were ready to launch into generating a research plan based on outcomes from our kick-off meeting.
Kick-off Recap
If you read our teammate Lauren’s previous medium post about Sprint 1 (https://medium.com/@laurenwhittingham/find-numo-mhci-capstone-week-1-2-68a17f18035a), you would know we ended things off needing to synthesize our kick-off meeting, as well as generate a research plan to carry out. To start, we created an affinity diagram to organize our outcomes from the kick-off meeting with numo. From this we generated 3 core stakeholder categories which we would need to research into:
1. Merchants
2. Consumers
3. Third Party Service Providers
It was apparent from our kick-off that more research into how local and national merchants operate and market themselves was necessary. Some questions rose up such as: “How do merchants decide which reward networks to be a part of? Do they have any say in how much cash-back customers receive? How does a local business become a part of a Card-Linked Offers program?” and many more. Our focus was to best understand the merchant’s goals first, and from there start to steer our research towards consumer behavior we might find at these merchant’s place of business.
Research Plan
In the first week of our sprint, our team devised the strategy and methods needed to carry out research on merchants. We sampled reward publisher apps (Such as Dosh, Pei, and Rakuten) to find local businesses which offered rewards to customers listed on the app. We also asked around for anyone who knew a business owner, and started to create a Contacts sheet to start calling. We split merchants into two categories: “Reward Program Merchants” and “Non-Reward Program Merchants”. From our contacts sheet, we started cold calling merchants asking if we could meet and talk about their business.
Our main method of primary research was to conduct semi-structured interviews with as many local merchant owners as possible. Our team generated a list of questions to try and keep the interviews consistent, and went out into the field! We estimate that by the end of sprint 2 our team will have interviewed over 10 business owners. From these interviews, we intend to come together and categorize important notes in order to generate insights about merchants.
Merchant Interview Experience
After established the merchants’ list, we started the field interview. For each interview, we had a facilitator to ask questions, and another team member to take notes, record, and take photos. Although we encountered some difficulties in the process, because not all merchants were cooperating, we still successfully interviewed two local Pittsburgh-based restaurants, Eliza Hot Metal Bistro and William Penn Tavern. They are both participating in reward programs. Through these interviews, we learned about their experience and pain points in these programs. These findings will help us improve the CLO experience.
On the other hand, we also talked to a “Non-Reward Program Merchant.” We contacted the owner of Kicksneaker in Pasadena, California, and conducted a remote interview with him. Kicksneaker, a local business that opened in last October, provides shoe cleaning services to residents. Through the conversation, we understood the problems and challenges he had encountered in business operations. These findings will be our opportunity to help improve the competitiveness of local businesses.
Through the investigation in two aspects, we have been able to understand the current status of local business from different perspectives and avoid blind spots. In the next few weeks, we will adopt the same strategy and conduct more interviews to collect data. Afterward, we will organize and summarize all the information to better understand the pain points of the merchants.
Interviewing Non-Merchant Stakeholders
While in the midst of interviewing local merchants, our team was able to meet with Steve VanFleet, CEO and President of Sentral, LLC. Steve is an expert on all things debit card related, including reward networks, major card companies, and publisher app’s relationship with merchants. He was able to answer many of our questions related to card-linked offers, and how they are generated/presented to consumers.
Through our meeting with Steve, we were able to generate a clearer version of our current state and future state Stakeholder Maps.
Stakeholder Mapping
When summarizing the kickoff meeting, we developed a stakeholder map of the current players in the Card-Linking Offers space to help us have a clearer understanding of the field.
Through further communication with our client and conversation with Steven, we generated a clearer vision of our future state Stakeholder Maps.
We are very pleased with and excited by our primary research up to this point. As we continue into sprint 3, we will be researching more about consumer behavior and hopefully designing some initial prototypes for our client! Before then, however, we will be crafting a conglomeration of our merchant research findings, and presenting it to our client.
Until next time!
