Case Study — KensingTOn
Why Kensington?
I may have been a little biased when choosing which market to work on, but I just love Kensington market. There really isn’t a market like it anywhere else in the world, It is one of a kind: vibrant, eclectic, authentic, and they also happen to have the best gelato in town.
The Kensington Market website failed to impress me, being a regular market shopper I have an idea of what the market means to me and to be honest the website doesn’t make justice how unique and colourful it really is. While navigating the website I also noticed a few shops didn’t have much of an online presence; some didn’t have a website while others only had Facebook pages. This initial research left me with an assumption that these shops just needed an official site to sell their services.
The whole process started with a quick trip to the market, my teammates Sucheta, Katie and I went for a long walk through the streets of Kensington, it was a brisk sunny day, quite rare considering it was mid-April. We took pictures, talked to some people and really witnessed the sense of community this market has to offer. At one point we decided to split up and talk to some vendors, understand any problems they face, get a sense of their business goals and a general understanding of what they are all about.
After talking to some employees and owners, we quickly realized they didn’t want an e-commerce site; they weren’t interested in selling their products online since most of their sales come from customers on-site. This left us a little puzzled, how are we to make an e-commerce site without actually selling anything on the site? More on this in a bit.
What are we doing?
We didn’t really know what route to take after our on-site interviews, we needed answers and we needed them fast. A 10 question survey was created and posted on Facebook, reddit, forum boards, even got my mom to get her English school classmates to fill out, it was quite a thrill explaining to her what the heck I was doing.
Results came back and they varied, key findings that stood out were that 42% of people go to Kensington sometimes, 61% hear about it through word of mouth, and they mostly love shopping and dining.
Multicultural, unique, eclectic, weird, artsy, friendly, affordable, descriptions of how people see Kensington, all music to my ears. Pedestrian Sunday was one of the standout responses to some of the questions. Now me being a Kensington regular I didn’t even know this was an actual event and neither did my team. If you don’t know, Pedestrian Sunday happens once a month, from May to October, cars are given the boot for streets filled with food, performers, dancers, music, vendors and hundreds of happy people.
A new round of interview questions were created. I conducted 3 sit down interviews, 2 of them were students and 1 of them from out of town. I found myself asking why several times, digging deep into the answers I was getting, but making sure I wasn’t being hostile, also staying clear of any leading questions. 2 out of the 3 participants didn’t know what Pedestrian Sunday was but seem intrigued, the other had actually attended during a Sunday outing and absolutely loved it.
Through our comparative analysis, we found similar markets that shared the same purpose and target audience as Kensington. Camden Market and Bunz were the main ones, both had a sense of community, diversity and cultural awareness. Heuristic evaluations were done using sites from St. Lawrence Market and Distillery District, both fared higher that Kensington in clarity, consistency and understandability.
130 survey results and 3 interviews later, we’re starting to see insightful results. After reviewing and analyzing the information, we came up with three user personas:
As a student, Sarah aims for a cheaper than usual outing experience, she’s not looking for fancy, over-the-top restaurants, she’s more than satisfied with a place to hang with friends that won’t break the bank.
There’s no place like home. And I do miss my home.
-Malala Yousafzai
Missing home is an understatement to Raul, although he’s still getting used to life in the big city, photography and latin food is what keeps him happy here. He’s yearning for a community that he can call his own, a place where he can meet people just like him.
Andrew loves laying out in the sun and diving into a new book, something about reading up into someone else’s life resonates with him. When he’s not reading he likes to hang with his girlfriend, always trying to find a way to spice up their date nights.
These personas would shape our vision for what features we would need for the website, what the website would look like and what problems we wanted to solve.
Planning
At this point we had a better idea of what we were trying to accomplish, we knew the vendors didn’t want to sell products online, we knew clients shared the same view, so how were we to sell stuff on our so called “e-commerce” site? short answer, we don’t, we can increase sales in other ways.
One of the major pain points that was highlighted through the survey and interview answers was how crowded Kensington Market can get. Pedestrian Sunday solves that problem during the summer, but instead of making it a monthly event, we created an event called Pedestrian Friday! same idea but this would be a weekly event. It was clear people love going to Kensington market so it was now our job to inform and highlight all the great vendors and events that make the market so great.
We created scenarios, user stories and use cases for our personas. After a few rounds of storytelling it was clear all three personas were interested in food suggestions, what’s popular in Kensington, what events can they be part of, visualization of the community, list of shops and info about the market. We had discussions as to which features needed to be on the e-commerce site and were able to focus on six main features:
- SPOTLIGHT — focus on articles and lists showcasing chefs of Kensington, popular vendors/shops and what’s new at the market.
- PICTURES — curated Instagram feed from users, top images that showcase how unique and diverse Kensington is, also including food images.
- EVENTS — list of events happening at Kensington, introducing Pedestrian Fridays, food + art festivals.
- MAP — interactive map with categories for narrowing down shop/restaurant searches, great way to display useful information for user.
- ABOUT — paragraph information on Kensington for people who would like to learn more.
- DISCOVER — Tour info, FAQs, General Condition, Privacy Policy, Site Map.
Design
We nailed down the key features, now we just had to bring it to life. We all sketched out the initial wireframe and from there I converted the paper wireframes into a mid-fidelity wireframe, using sketch and then into a clickable prototype on InVision.
I used Bunner’s website as initial motivation, I thought the idea of their fixed top nav bar was a great idea, and their featured section with blocks of articles really stood out to me, simple yet effective. I also loved the idea of a one-page-fits-all, all the information you need available to you in one single scrollable page, from there I decided that any further information you wanted to read would be included in an in-page popup.
Unlike the official Kensington Market website, it was important to include social media links on all articles and events, sharing is caring.
Prototype
Still tweaking the page, but for now you can view the mid-fidelity prototype here.
Usability Testing
I conducted 4 in-person usability tests, while my project mates were able to get 2 people to also test. I gave the participants a scenario and watched them closely as they navigated through the site making sure the tasks were completed, some succeeded, some struggled and some gave up, all in all, these were some of the main feedback I got:
- Font too big
- Alignment issues/Layout Inconsistencies
- Fix checkbox, map taking up most of page
- Icon misplacements/Common Area/Spacing
- Pagination not clear
- Distracting shapes/icons
- Too much negative space
Summary
I quite enjoyed this project, not only did I get to learn about Kensington Market but I developed some skills that will be beneficial once out in the real world. Me and my teammates worked really well together, the times we had disagreements or different views we managed to work it out in the end.
It would be interesting to see if something like Pedestrian Friday would work for Kensington Market, the market is way too crowded sometimes. Having a car-free zone on a weekly basis would certainly make it easier for people to navigate through the market and not have to worry about safety.
