My role and responsibilities

Foundational research

Summary:

In foundational research, my goal was to find out what the user needs and how to address those needs with my product. User research data in the foundational research phase is collected through semi-structured interviews. The goal of this interview is to explore as much as possible about the interviewees opinions and their experience of purchasing products at a local bakery. This type of research is a primary research , qualitative and discriptive in nature since it is based on understanding user’s needs and aims to describe users goals and problems. The data provided from the interviews should help defining user problems and help me as the a researcher to empathise with a user, build empathy maps and create personas.

Accessibility was especially considered when creating personas, user stories, and user journey maps.

Empathy Maps

Personas

In the next step the most common themes in the user foundational research data were recognised and the users whom personify those themes were grouped under a specific persona - a fictional user whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a group of users. 

User Story

User Journey Maps

Problem Statement

Competitive Audit

Goal Statement

User Flow

Big Picture Storyboards

Close Up Storyboards

Wireframing

Paper wireframes

While doing paper wireframes a certain elements which I was happy with were marked with a star and some of those elements were kept in the final design – like action buttons ( pickup and delivery), 5 elements bottom menu bar, news and campaigns carousel and featured products.

Digital Wireframes

First Usability Study

Introduction: Research goal of this study is to identify pain point and problems are users are experiencing while using our application to order food from the bakery.

Primary research questions:

• How long does it take for a user to complete some of the core tasks?

• How easy is to use and navigate through the app?

• What can we conclude from the user flow?

• What are the pain point?

KPIs:

• Time on task.

• Drop off rates.

• Error Rates.

Methodology

• Moderated semi-structured 1 on 1 interviews

• Location: Homes of the study participants.

• Duration per session: 35min

• Each of 10 participants got a task to order a specific product from the menu, change settings or complete other tasks. After the completed task participants were asked a set of open-end questions about the experience of using our app.

Participants:

• Participants had to reside in Stavanger area.

• Participants are individuals who are often getting breakfast or lunch at a bakery.

• Participants were individuals of age between 19 and 56, equally men and women

• List of participants include people with different backgrounds and at least one person with visual impairment.

Script:

• Prompt 1: Start the application and sign up with your email or phone number or

  continue by logging in with Google or Facebook account. Allow notifications about leftovers for pickup.

  FollowUp: Describe how easy it was to register and allow notifications? Is there any other account you preffer logging in with?

• Prompt 2: Filter the menu for gluten free pastry.

  FollowUp: Describe how easy it was to search and filter different categories of products? Would you change the way filters are applied to the menu?

• Prompt 2: Add a product to the shopping cart and set the pick up time in 30 min.

  FollowUp: How difficult was to set the pickup time? What would you change?

• Prompt 2: Complete the order and pay.

  FollowUp: How easy was the checkout ? What would you change?

• In order to gain a deeper understanding about users opinions and perspectives each participant was asked a set of same questions.

  1. How would you rate our app when it comes to easy of use? Why so?

  2. Would you consider reccomending it to a friend? For what reasons?

  3. What about the app would you change? Why?

  4. How easy was to find the product you enjoy having?

  5. How difficult was the ordering process?

  6. What about the app did you like the most?

  7. Was there anyting you find annoying while completing the task?

  8. What do you think about the process you just went through?

  9. How would you compare the experience of using this app compering to the similiar apps?

Themes and Insights

First design iterations

Before the usability study

After the usability study

High fidelity prototyping

Second Usability study - findings and iterations

• It was observed that 5 out of 10 study participant are having problems finding the shopping cart icon. Based on this theme the insight is that all common used icons need to be in the bottom navigation bar.

• Based on the theme that most users would like to be able to choose between delivery and pickup later in the ordering process ( in case they change their mind ), and in order to eliminate that interruption of use flow the action button is added allowing the user to toggle between Delivery and Pick Up option.

Screens and Features

Accessibility considerations

• The application is designed with high color contrast and a reader friendly design for people with visual impairment

• Most action buttons as well as the navigation menu is placed in the lower 2/3 of the screen allowing comfortable one hand use.

• The feature that enables the user to open a food locker using a QR code is developed with Olav persona in mind and other user who can not stand in line due to their disability.

Takeaways and next steps

Going back to the competitive audit created at the research stage of the project a final analysis could be made by compering NT Bakery app and its features with other similar products on the market. Nt bakery app includes some new features for users that were not taken into consideration in our competitors design development and add value to the product and the brand.

A suggestion for future research might be to include a broader sample ( more study participants ), creating more personas and researching available secondary data.

Limitations and self criticism

The main limitation of the conducted research is found in its setting and number of participants. Due to the pandemic and social distancing a larger number of participants for the user research study as well as for usability study couldn’t be acquired making it difficult to generalise the research results on a bigger population.

Another important consideration is that the information provided from the semi-structured interviews might be affected by researchers (my) presence and personal connection with some of the participants thus disturbing the reliability of the data.

A further disadvantage of this research can be language limitations. With English being the first language for neither the interviewee nor the researcher delicate nuances regarding the user experience and emotions might get “lost in translation”.