How visiting a market made us better UX writers
And most of all, a better team
Intro
2019 has been a turning point for us, the UX writing team at Gympass. At the beginning of the year we were 2, and by September we were 5: growing at a fast pace sometimes can make you forget what you are there for, and what your focus must be on.
Being each of us specialized in one tribe can be positive but makes it harder to keep consistency, and generally, behave as a team. Another challenge we are facing is that one of our members is based in a totally different geographical area than the rest of the team.
So we started wondering: How do we keep focus? How do we feel as a team? How do we work as a team?
That’s when our most senior collaborator had a wonderful idea: test UX writing out of a digital product and benchmark best practices together. This also seemed to be a great way to end the year and find strength in our team to start the new one.
Our collaborative activity took place in two different parts of the world, namely Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Madrid (Spain). We visited two open markets, that were unknown to us, with some tasks to be completed:
Task 1: About the market
- Are there any available information about the product? Like: What it is, how it works, opening hours.
Task 2: Toilet
- Find the toilets without asking no one.
In this task, the idea was to analyze the signaling and, later, the conditions of the area designated.
Task 3: Emotional Analysis
- Is it a place just for groceries? What else is involved in the whole experience?
Task 4: Lunch time
- What are the options?
- Is it easy to choose one of them?
- What made you choose one and not another?
Task 5: Open discussion
- Is the purpose of the location clear?
- Do the many options help the user achieve/understand this purpose or do they confuse them?
- Is there anything that is clashing in the whole experience?
This article is to draw conclusions about what we saw and what we learnt.
Phase 1: São Paulo (Mercado de Pinheiros)
The Mercado de Pinheiros is located in a very popular area of Sao Paulo, next to important landmarks, like Teodoro Sampaio, Faria Lima and Largo da Batata.
Compared to other markets in the city, this one is quite small and discreet. There are no signs at the main entrance but a small board with the market’s name and the inauguration date of the current building (the original market was created back in 1910, then it got demolished and rebuilt in 1971). For some reason, the board was placed on the lower left side of the main entrance, next to a few seats, being barely visible even to the most attentive people. There’s no information about opening hours.
When you walk in (literally, as this entrance isn’t accessible to people in wheelchairs), there are some shopping carts available on the right, and a board with directions to the toilets on the left. There aren’t any maps, so basically you have to take a look around to find what you’re looking for. That’s how we found another entrance that led to the market’s free parking lot, which we didn’t know existed.
The upper floor consists mostly of butcher shops and a few restaurants, besides the men’s toilets. On the lower floor you can find a broader variety of shops and items, ranging from typical vegetables, nuts, cheese, and tobacco to even artisanal and decorative products. There, with a bit of difficulty, you can also find the women’s toilets. The stalls were dark, with a low ceiling, each one with a different poster on the door, and the whole room seemed to be stuck in the 70’s, when it was built. Also, usually men’s and women’s toilets are next to each other, but that wasn’t the case here.
The lunch time was definitely the tastiest one. It wasn’t hard to choose an option, as all the restaurants were close to each other. Two of us decided to go for pizza, and the others preferred traditional Brazilian food. Since the tables were on the balcony outside, a bit far from the pizza place, we received “pagers” to let us know when they were ready for us to pick them up. Even though the tables were a bit uncomfortable, the food made it worth it. Napoli Centrale and Mocotó Café were great choices.
Emotionally speaking, the Mercado de Pinheiros isn’t as relatable as the traditional Mercado Central, famous for the huge bologna sandwiches and cod dumplings. However, for local people, it’s a great market option, especially because there aren’t many tourists around. Fresh vegetables and typical products from around the country were available at affordable prices and at a convenient location. Even though the experience could’ve been better regarding some aspects, it’s a nice place overall.
Phase 2: Madrid (Mercado de Chamberí)
The Mercado de Chamberí has been up and working since 1943, even though the building dates back to 1876. It’s located in one of the most charming neighbourhoods of the city center, Chamberí.
The shops are all contained on one single floor and there are no stairs to access the main entrance, which makes the place accessible for anyone who would like to enter. They have an underground parking, for those who would like to reach the place by car (that otherwise would be an adventure, since parking in the city center is not an easy task). The upper floor is occupied with a gym, to complete the experience of the user with a complementary business.
It’s really easy to reach any part of the market, and even without looking at the maps, the distribution is quite intuitive.
The aisles are all dedicated to groceries, fruits and vegetables, whereas at the end there is a hall exclusively for restaurants and bars. The working hours are different between the market itself (morning) and the restaurants area (from lunch to late at night), but this is not surprising as it is a common behaviour. This hour range covers different ages: older people tend to shop in the morning, while younger generations hit the market at night, when the food stands are already closed.
The product shows clear information at any time of the experience:
At the entrance:
- working hours and purpose of the product;
- map (also written in Braille code);
Aisles:
- they were given names of streets, as if it was a small city;
- maps to quickly redirect the user in case they got lost in the middle of the experience;
- indications about the possibility of doing groceries online and follow them on social networks (common cross-selling technique);
- toilet: located “at the end of the aisle, on the right”, a common location for most bars and restaurants (a basic heuristics for usability). It was also well signalized at any time.
Mercado de Chamberí, overall, shows to be empathetic with their audience. Any task can be completed easily in a few steps, thanks to the clear indications. Even when the user is mistaken, or lost, it’s easy for them to recover the error (another basic heuristics for usability).
The purpose of the product is clear already at the entrance, the many options don’t overwhelm the user as they are organized clearly and have a different value proposition, and the experience can be completed with complementary products that are aimed at engaging the user more (examples seen and documented: a gym on the upper floor, social networks available, option to do the groceries online, beauty center, tailoring shop).
Conclusions
Great analysis, but what for? As said in the introduction the main idea of this activity was to enrich us as a team, to make us grow as UX writers.
Spending at least 8 hours a day in front of a computer screen makes you miss the outer world sometimes. We focus so much on digital products and their pattern, that we forget we can find the same need, maybe even greater, in a hospital, a post office, or a market.
Visiting a market for a morning, not only gave us the chance to disconnect for a bit, but also really connected us back to the true meaning of our job: creating meaningful copy for a clear and usable user experience.
As you can get lost looking for the toilet, you can get lost buying a plan, or looking for the gyms in your plan. In all cases, the user ends up frustrated, and that’s what we need to fix with our copies.
An added value to this activity, is that it got us closer, even if only for a bit. Our company is growing at a crazy pace, and being focused all in different tribes, sometimes alienates us from the rest of the writing team. Being out there, together, even if in different countries, made us remember that the closer we are, the stronger we can be.
This article was co-created by the UX writing team at Gympass.
You can reach out to us if you like: uxwriting@gympass.com
