TL;DR
Product: Craft Notes App to connect maker aficionados with local business in the craft beer and cocktail industry
Research method: Usability Testing & Stakeholder Interview, competitive audit, AB testing, card sorting,
Findings: Users needed a reason to return more frequently to the app, users liked the community aspect but didn’t have a way to share it, they didn’t have an incentive to promote the app to others.
Solution: Recommend additional features to increase engagement, retention and conversions
Craft Notes
is an organization that curates an experience designed to support local businesses, encourage exploration, and creates an all-inclusive community of craft lovers. They do this by focusing on connecting craft breweries, distilleries, and restaurants with local consumers, allowing them to find something new to explore in Minnesota. Craft Notes can help to address the marketing needs of small, local businesses by connecting with potential customers and creating opportunities for initial and repeat engagement. From a consumer perspective, Craft Notes seeks to make it easier to identify small businesses in the local market that the consumer desires to support. Current users are incentivized to explore available options by rewarding them with a complimentary drink via a passport book or 2-for-1 drinks via the mobile app.
A Part of the Community
During the initial client interview, I learned that CraftNotes is interested in building trust as the go-to expert for identifying the “best" in a local market. Through previous user research, they found that many of their current customers use Craft Notes because they are interested in feeling like a part of a community. The client mentioned considering things such as hosting more events or other opportunities that allow insights, feedback, and data to be shared among users and vendors. CraftNotes is looking for additional ways that this goal can be accomplished.
Discussing the deep dive conducted after the client interview.
The “Feeling of Doing Good”
While CraftNotes had several marketing ideas related to sales, they expressed interest in improving the way they identify and define features in the app. Overall, they want the user experience to embody the "feeling of doing good", increase levels of excitement around using the app and encouraging more engagement with the experience.
Proposed Feature Road Map
Helping With Decision Fatigue
As a group of 4 UX designers, we set out to learn more about this type of business. We wanted to know what CraftNote’s competition looked like. We found that there are a lot of apps similar to CraftNotes with similar problems but vastly different approaches to their business models. We chose to focus our efforts on what was important to both the users and decision-makers. And how we would suggest changes to the experience based on our findings. This model wasn’t about the number of discounts or the number of vendor partnerships. What set CraftNote’s strategy apart was the thoughtfully curated list of vendors. This is what the team and I deemed to be the value proportion. It wasn’t clearly stated on the website, there was no mention of it in the app or in their Passport books. But during our stakeholder interview, our client was adamant that this is what made the CraftNotes brand special. CraftNotes needs to clearly explain the value they provide on their many platforms. Because of this, we decided to focus our attention on bringing awareness to the brand's value: exclusive access to a premium curated list of vendors you won’t find anywhere else.
Guiding Strategy
The strategy was created as a way to develop our ideas that we would provide to our client. This was a 5-day design sprint so the best approach to making wireframes—to address the problem areas—was to divide and conquer. I took on the map and craft category wireframes while my teammates focused on telling the brand story, building up the social media platforms from within the app and the referral screens to help with engagement.
All user experience touch points for CraftNotes will help rewards subscribers to feel passionate and involved so that they are able to connect and create a community with craft connoisseurs. We will do this by focusing on community and brand experience. As a result, we hope to see an increase in subscription engagement.
Recommendations
Client Presentation
We chose to create a client presentation in the form of a scripted video to be presented to the client remotely. The script was written with a scenario to help us sell the story.
In conclusion
I chose to recommend a variety of additional app features. The team focused our efforts on explaining the value on the home page, in a simple 3 step design in a modal that can be adjusted after the user has seen it once or twice. Next, we recommend including some search functions in the map showcasing some craft categories as well as showing the social voting that we believe will help the brand build a community of devout followers. And finally a social media in-app feature and referral page prototypes. Allowing the users to do some of the marketing for CraftNotes while also building the brand's new and renewed subscription numbers.