Barmi: The APP to improve the relationship between neighbors and businesses. Part I

UX/UI Case of study. UX Research

Overview

Every story, project, and idea begins after an experience or strong emotion. In my case, it was a feeling that arose during my visit to Toledo (Spain). Local businesses died, they lost the faith in surviving the consequences left by the Covid crisis. But the shops in Toledo weren’t the only ones going through difficult times, it also happened in the shops in my neighborhood.

🛑 Problem: Local businesses are currently affected by two factors: the consequences that the Covid caused during and after and the rise of electronic commerce.

🌱 Challenge: Design a digital product that encourages local commerce thanks to the creation of a more engaged digital community between neighbors and businesses.

📝 My Role: Create the user experience and interface of a digital product that adds value and solutions to the problem raised.

💡 Methodology: For this project, I have applied the Design Thinking methodology for a total of 4 weeks.

Project Timeline.

0. Project Validation

Before starting the project, it has been convenient to analyze the viability of this project not only to know its possible impact, but also to begin to focus its execution in the correct way.

We begin by investigating some current data, focused on the behavior that local commerce has had. As for example the number of closings, billing and their role within the national economy. It's necessary to emphasize that the project arises from a need seen in Spain and therefore, the data and solutions that we will gather in this case study are aligned with the environment. Spanish national.

And the figures are the best way to show the real situation that
By the end of 2020, 15% of the businesses had closed:

DATA TAKEN FROM THE SPANISH COMMERCE CONFEDERATION (CEC)

Up to this point the seriousness of the problem was clear, businesses were closing and this not only had repercussions on family economies, but also on the national economy. Now was the time to think about how to help this sector and reverse this situation.

1. Investigate and Discover

▪Desk Research
▪Survey
▪Benchmarking

When we talk about empathizing, we mean understanding the user, respecting their ideas, and focusing our efforts on ensuring that the work carried out is consistent with those opinions and needs. In this specific project, we have two types of users: consumers and sellers. As expected, the times for this project played a trick on us, which is why we had to focus our product in this first stage on a specific user. This decision was not made without first substantiating the answers to questions such as:

-If the business needs to evolve to a digital channel to gain visibility, who do we focus on these efforts, from whom do we need to have conversion and interaction?
-Who influences the exchange chain with higher expectations and needs?

Well, these and other questions were the main indicators to select a typology of users on which to focus the beginnings of this project: consumers.

▪Desk Research

To start with this stage, I have gone to trusted web platforms to acquire real and updated data.

• CEC: Confederación Española de Comercio, el punto de encuentro del comercio español. It is the business organization for the defense, representation, and promotion of the general interests of urban and local commerce.
• Comercio.es: Official platform of Spanish commerce. From this site we have studied an interesting article: Spanish consumer trends. From this document, some data of interest has been compiled, summarized as follows:

• 71% of consumers decide on the price between one store or another.
• 48% of consumers direct their attention to shops closer to their home.
• 43% decide on sites whose treatment and friendliness are better since they claim that trust is very important.

According to a study by a Canadian online commerce platform, Spain is the country whose consumers most say they support small businesses during the pandemic, although almost half say they feel uncomfortable buying in person.

The accumulated data of this first phase of research is collected in the following graph, which gathers opinions and general comments on digital platforms:

▪Surveys

A sample of 15 people was surveyed with varied questions focused on their interest in local commerce and the interest in social networks they exercise.

The survey was aimed at users of all ages without distinction of sex and age. To segment the opinions according to groups, some questions focused on looking for patterns of activity and personal characteristics.

Link to Survey

Some of the most important data collected during the survey.

The opinions of the interviewees revealed points to take into account in the definition of our product such as interests, expectations and other ideas that are relevant during the process.

Featured verbatims from interviews.

To summarize the main ideas gathered from these interviews, I have constructed an Affinity Diagram to better organize the patterns of ideas and behaviors:

• Usefulness: It should be applied to functionalities that solve consumer concerns, such as the categorization of products and services, the location of sites through interactive maps, availability, etc.
• Quality: It is necessary to highlight the values ​​of quality, reputation, and the knowledge the professionals have in each field.
• Location: Proximity is one of the factors that promote access to local businesses. This possibility should be highlighted because its benefits are highly valued by the users interviewed.
• Economy: It's another of the attractions that they offer and capture the attention of users. Knowledge and access to offers should be one of the highlights in a digital product, due to the conversion they generate and their high visibility and importance for consumers.
• Trust: The attention that consumers receive is highly valued when choosing a service. For this reason, consumers not only repeat, but also feel more influenced to support businesses.

▪Benchmarking

At this point in the process, I wanted to rescue some knowledge acquired by obtaining my UX/UI certification from Google. Among the most memorable techniques for me, the Competitive Audit stands out, since I consider it one of the most complete that I have been able to observe during my experience in the field of user experience.

What makes this technique so special is that it covers all kinds of factors within a digital product. This method studies the level of usability and consistency of the product, the value proposition and the level of accessibility that it offers.

Tienessal, Nextdoor and Local Flavor Competitve Auidt.

Some Conclusions thanks to the Competitive Audit:

• Type of competitor: Mobile applications that represent both direct and indirect competition have been analyzed. There are many patterns that worked and should carry and others that do not add special value to our user experience.
• Value proposition: In general, they are platforms that provide a digital communication channel mainly between neighbors, which facilitates the purchase and sale of second-hand items or the publication of lost objects. On the other hand, Local Flavor does focus its business model on advertising offers and services for gastronomic businesses.
• Main Audience: In general they are applications focused on young people and adults. This is due to the demand that occurs in this age range, determined by lifestyle and access to technology.
• Features: Several features cannot be lacking in this type of application, such as search tools, online messages, filtering options and notifications. They are the most general and the basis of an application that is committed to creating a community and facilitating the search for services.
• Accessibility: In this case, the analysis has focused on the possibilities it offers in terms of language change, the contrast between visual elements, dimensions between visual elements, legibility of texts, etc. These are examples that have some inconsistencies when applying the accent color and promote a correct contrast between text and background, defects have also been found in the layout.
• Tone: For this project, we want to achieve a social approach, that is why this factor has been included to evaluate how communication with users occurs and if it has the correct effect. In general, they achieve a friendly and formal tone, through direct messages so as not to confuse the user.

2. Define

▪User Persona
▪Empathy Map
▪Insights

The time to define has come. After extensive research, it only remains to gather the key aspects into more conclusive ideas.

The best way to start this definition is by developing a User Persona, which in other words is focused on representing an average user, which has been reflected in the previous stage. Let’s go into more detail in this type of analysis.

▪User Persona

Let’s meet Lisa, who will model our user at this stage to help us understand their ideas and behaviors.

▪Empathy Map

In the Empathy Map we look for patterns, modes of behavior and thoughts that help us to empathize with our user and define needs that we must solve in our product.

Insights

Throughout the process carried out so far we have come to the conclusion that our objective is not to serve as a digital commerce platform focused on local businesses, but to offer these businesses a platform to create community and engagement from the technological resources that we have in the actuality.

Value Proposition

Thanks to the research carried out, I was able to understand what the real needs detected were. That is why to better focus the solution I have created a value proposition in a few words, which perfectly summarizes what is needed, why it is important and the objectives you are looking for:

Conclusions

If you have reached this point, thank you very much for your attention✨.
This article corresponds to the first part of this project that will continue soon.
So stay tuned for the second part of this project🚀.