Experience Kensington! HUNT, DISCOVER, SHARE!
For the last two weeks my group and I have been tirelessly designing an e-commerce website for Kensington Market; a popular market that is packed with culture, zeal, and something new at every corner. We researched, worked our ideas and then reworked them, sketched, and then prototyped our final design. It was a long process for us and it involved a bit of help from our advisors, but we were able to construct an idea that we felt would help the Kensington Market shop owner address their problem and be better off in the end.
When we were first given the assignment of creating an e-commerce website for a local market in Toronto, we all agreed it would be a cool project. We chose, as a group, Kensington Market. We discussed our own opinions and experiences at the market and how often each of us had been. Half of the group were more occasional shoppers while the other half had only been a handful of times. I was one who had only been a handful of times, and in those handful of times I knew that going to Kensington Market was an experience. I had been into the odd shops or the unique but yummy bakeries. The smells of the Market, and the eccentric storefronts we something so unique and so distinct to Kensington. I shared my overall impression with the group and they agreed. Going there was an experience to be had, and part of the charm of visiting Kensington Market.
I played a large role in our research phase of this project. I helped devise the hypothesis and build our questionnaires. We began that process by asking ourselves what we wanted to accomplish in the end. We needed to create an e-commerce website for the vendors of Kensington Market to sell their goods online. This was our initial thinking of what an e-commerce website was; strictly selling product online in a formula similar to Amazon. This was our first idea, and as we began our research we began to think that this wasn’t the best approach. We would later, with the help of our advisors, rethink this approach and alter our thinking twice more.
The research was a fun task for me. We began it as a group of three embarking on an adventure of our own. We set off in the direction of Kensington Market to learn from the shoppers and shop owners about their experiences in the market. We asked the shoppers and shop owners different sets of questions and recorded the data during each interview. My group members Marianne and Gabriel interviewed a few of the shop owner while I personally questioned a few different shoppers. We also posted our questionnaire for the shoppers of Kensington Market on our collective social media sites, asking our friends if they would kindly help us. With these questionnaires we were able to learn more about people’s personal shopping habits, why they liked the market, whether they would recommend it to others, etc. We were able to pick up a few key insights that we began to tie together with the data we gathered from the store owners. The key pieces of data being that 57% learned about the Market from a friend or family member and our store owners greatly rely on word of mouth to gain business.
Our second customer survey was aimed at helping us gather information about online shoppers and their purchasing habits online. We wanted to know what types of products they purchased, whether they looked at reviews, and how satisfied they were with the experience. We also asked how they search for new products, and what type of information they needed to feel secure in their purchase, among others. It was a questionnaire designed to help us gain insight into how to properly be able to create an online store. We wanted to provide the user with enough information to feel secure in their purchase. From our research we learned that our average shopper often looked at reviews when consulting an online product (86%). Another key insight was that our consumer often learned about new online stores from friendly recommendations (83%). We were beginning to tie all our information and insights together to form a solid idea.
Creating our personas was easy. We decided to create two separate persona to fit the two similar but different types of shoppers of Kensington. I created our two personas and developed their stories to fit into the types of shoppers we need to develop for. Dakota, was our thrifty young shopper. Her user scenario fit around browsing the different shops, looking for cool and unique finds that she would ultimately want to share on social media. Franklin (who later became Jonas) was our Specific Seeker. His scenario revolved around his passion for food and his career. He was searching for a specific spice so he would be able to grow his skills. In finding his spice he would later be so pleased with the experience that he too would share this new store with his other chef friends. Though our shoppers have different needs, they both enjoy shopping at Kensington Market. Through the research we gathered all the shopper spoke highly of the experiences they had in Kensington. Everything from the quality of the products to the great prices, the unique things you could find and the cool culture and ethnicity of the market. But most highly was how people spoke of the shop owners and how they were treated with warm welcomes and superb service.
The opinions of the experience that we found from shoppers of Kensington Market is what ultimately drove us to create a site that would allow people to physically go to the Market instead of shopping it online. We didn’t think it right to deprive people of that experience.
During our first week of working we had run through two different approaches to an e-commerce website. Our initial approach was abandoned when we made aware of a more broad definition of the term e-commerce. We didn’t have to create a strict online store where users could shop the products online. We could simply draw shoppers from the online site to the stores with an incentive or intention of purchasing. This is where our second idea blossomed (though later, was also abandoned). Our second approach was much more loose. I had envisioned a virtual, interactive, cartoon-style map. Almost a treasure map that our shoppers could use to explore and discover the treasure that await them in the Market. It was a creative idea that spoke to the whimsey and oddball nature of the Market. We took inspiration from the Rio 2016 Olympics website (view it here). It was a fun idea that was short-lived due to the fact that our users probably wouldn’t use it instead of Google maps.
So, I put my thinking cap back on and hashed a few things out with one of our advisors and began brainstorming. I started analyzing our main problem and objective. How do we bring more people to Kensington Market? Much of our information seemed to point to word of mouth. Both our store owners and shoppers relied on it to get their information. That was the answer! To create a website that would be an online word-of-mouth platform for users to share their finds and experiences from each shop or venue in the market. In creating this platform we would be informing our users giving them not only concrete information from the vendor about their services, but also providing them with opinions shared from users who have experienced the service, and purchased the quality products. They would be receiving all the information (according to our questionnaires) they could possibly want to make an informed decision as to whether they wanted to physically experience that shop in person. There would be no “wasting their time” or “wasting their money” on a lacklustre store. They would be completely informed.
With this idea fully formed we needed just a little more information from online user-reviewers. I sent out another questionnaire to my friends on social media and pleaded with them to again lend me their time. We were able to gain all the insights we need into why people review products, what drives them to write reviews, why they wouldn’t take a review to heart, and what sorts of products or services they read reviews for. This information allowed us to make certain that our approach would be something users actually would be interested in.
From here we compared and looked at online sites like Yelp, Foodora, and Phind. We also looked into the visual organization of Etsy and how its search function and mission statements were designed on the home page. Creating the user functionality was another aspect I played a part in. The research told us that our user needed to be able to search for their products. They usually search by category or keywords (product name, simple phrases) and we decided since we were going to be including social media reviews and images that we would include a way to search by hashtag as well. We looked at a few different ways to display a search bar and decided as a group that a long bar with the ability to filter by a category dropdown would be best. Another function we decided as a group would be fun to include was the “Take me on an adventure” button that would be placed to the left of the search button. This function was inspired by Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” button. Since our entire experience centers around the user experiencing and exploring the market we wanted them to explore as much as possible. This button would randomly generate shops or venues with nothing in the search bar. It would simply show the user something new for them to read through and explore on their next outing in Kensington.
Providing the user with as much information without overloading them was also a concern we kept in mind. We wanted to give them the information they craved, but in an organized manner. Each vendor page would contain extensive contact information; a rating (similar to Yelp’s star system); reviews; a story summary (including what they sell and their back story or history), photos provided by users and vendor, and any specials or discounts being offered by the shop. We borrowed design inspiration and information organization tips from websites like Yelp and used our information from our research to design our vendor pages accordingly. We organized the key contact information onto one page, reviews, photos, and specials each onto their own separate pages. This would all be accessed through tabs the user could click on and be able to navigate through to ensure they were going to a shop that would fit their taste and needs.
We also designed the site so user could create their own personal account to track explorations through Kensington. This was their Account Page. They would sign in and be able to track their favourite places, view their reviews, see suggestions based on their likes and also track where they have been in the past. This would give them a sense of their progress through the Market and allow them to see where they’ve been and more readily tell others their personal experiences in the Market as well.
Though I didn’t have a hand in personally designing the prototype, I was able to have a hand in sketching some of the pages and how they would visually look on the page. I feel comfortable in saying that I helped design how the information on each page is shown. Marianne did a spectacular job bringing our research to life in the prototype and designing the visual look of our website. You can view the prototype here!
We created an overall experience that we felt would properly inform our user and give them all the information they would need to arrange an experience for themselves in Kensington Market. Whether they are a specific seeker type like Jonas, searching for a bohemian rug, or a thrifty shopper like Dakota in search of a deal and a unique find; we have designed this website to have easy access to information to ensure the user won’t waste their time in search of something they won’t find. We wanted to ensure that their experience would be a positive one and that they would continue to pass on their experience via word of mouth by reviewing wherever they went in Kensington after their experience. This website encourages users to hunt for their treasure, discover new finds, and share their EXPERIENCE!
