The Kensington Dollar Project
My second project at RED Academy was to create an e-commerce experience for Kensington Market in Toronto. My first impression was that this was not going to be an easy task, my knowledge of the Market as the last bastion of anti-corporate, independent space in Toronto, was at odds with the notion of unbridled online consumption. However, I soon learned is that the term e-commerce doesn’t have to mean an Amazon dot com site. E-commerce can encompass everything from the exchange of physical products or services in an online network to selling a physical experience in an online space. My job was to find a solution using a combination of the e-commerce spectrum: How do I help Kensington Market adapt to the growing online retail environment, while advocating an interest in shopping local and enhancing community engagement?
With this project I hope to be able to generate meaningful insights from my data in order to come up with a solution. However, I also hope to keep it simple, and stick to the essential features of the product so I don’t end up creating The Homer of e-commerce experiences:
Research
My user research consisted of an online survey (24 respondants) as well as 3 in person interviews. As a starting point I wanted my user research to focus on why people shop in Kensington Market as opposed to anywhere else. Was there an emotional connection? Was it proximity? Prices? I also wanted to explore peoples online shopping habits as well. I wanted to find out what brought people online to shop, how often, and what their experiences with customer loyalty programs were. Here is some of the resulting key data.
My research found that people go to Kensington Market to support local independent business, to experience the diversity and culture, to find unique products, and for the cheap prices. Shopping there made them feel good and resourceful, they took pride in shopping local and contributing to the community. My in person interviews revealed more about customers online shopping habits. The people I interviewed tended to shop online for specific items, but liked searching for deals and exclusive offers. They also felt valued by customer loyalty programs and that exclusive online offers fostered customer loyalty.
With the data I had, I wanted to look for examples of how people shop in sustained local communities. It was evident that customers took pride in shopping local and wanted to show it, even the respondents that didn’t feel connected to the community in Kensington recognized the importance of its independent appeal. However, people were also motivated by cheaper prices and special offers, so I determined the solution had to come with a benefit to the consumer as much as the businesses (addressing the user needs!).
In my domain research I came across the Bristol Pound (http://bristolpound.org/), which is a local currency used in the city of Bristol, UK. It has been a success story by letting people’s money show their local support and also by sustaining local business by keeping money circulating in Bristol between independent shops. I noted that while the Bristol Pound website focused on facilitating the exchange of the currency in person, they did not have an online marketplace where the currency could be used in local online shops.
The Opportunity
I saw the opportunity to take the existing idea of local currency to foster local, sustainable shopping, and incorporate the goal of the project, to create an integrated online shopping experience for Kensington Market. It would, in effect, create a sort of single neighborhood economic zone to benefit customers and shops. Customers would get exclusive offers and discounts as incentive to use the the local currency. I called it the Kensington Dollar project. With this, the goal alignment of the customer and the business became clear:
User Scenario
So with my solution in mind, I created my user persona and scenario. My primary user persona created context and informed my design process for the Kensington Dollar experience. Without a scenario, or context, it becomes harder to visualize and validate your design intent.
“As a customer of Kensington Market, I want to use Kensington Dollars so that I can save money and support local business.”
My particular user is an occasional online shopper, but a frequent shopper in Kensington Market. Supporting local is part of her identity. She usually knows what she wants to buy, but sometimes she submits to impulse buys involving snacks and treats from the diverse food shops and vendors. She is looking for a scarf, something unique, to face the fall weather with. However, she wants to avoid the crowds on this particular weekend and remembers that she has Kensington Dollars in her online account that she previously purchased. She opens the Kensington Market website to see what she can find.
Design
With my user scenario in mind, I sketched out a site map to get all my features in order. I used a site map instead of a user flow because it is a web based experience involving pages. My priority was to make the explanation of the Kensington currency and how it worked the top priority on the landing page with multiple opportunities for a new user to easily sign up and create an account. However, since my primary user already has an account, once they are signed in, the homepage now focuses on exclusive online offers for the user based on how many Kensington Dollars they have in their account. It also displays deals and events in the Market via an Instagram feed to propose the user to visit the physical Market with their Kensington Dollars as well. My user is an avid Instagram user, and is familiar with and already engaging in the Instagram platform. Therefore the social media engagement will take advantage of what users are already using to connect them to the Market.
My main highlighted idea from the sketches was to have the users Kensington Dollar balance easily visible on the fixed header bar, while revealing online offers for that balance amount or less, making offers personal and accessible. The exclusive online offers and discounts are offered to customers who choose to pay with the Kensington Dollar and demonstrate their commitment to shopping local. I included this feature from my research because I found that personalized and exclusive offers created more customer loyalty for users, especially online.
Prototype
I created a medium fidelity prototype consisting of a 13 screen flow using Sketch. This was to purposely limit the functionality to demonstrate my user scenario. I haven’t had as much experience working with online layouts up until now so the one thing I noticed was that I made everything bigger that I intended to in the prototype, not thinking in terms of the scale of a 1024px layout. However, it was completely usable in InVision. The clickable prototype takes you through my user scenario that was previously mentioned. The culmination of the experience is a checkout process that demonstrates the online shop integration.
Summary
My biggest regret was not getting to conduct usability testing of the prototype in a meaningful way due to the time constraints of the project.
I focused more time on making sure I had a usable prototype for the presentation. As a result, time for usability testing wasn’t factored into the project at the last minute. Regardless of this, my peers were highly receptive to my solution, especially the InVision prototype and the goal alignment between the business and user goal. I realize that the Kensington Dollar project resides in the hard and risky quadrant of ideas, but with the potential for great reward. In the future I would do more ongoing research and user testing in order to reduce the potential risk in a bold venture.
