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AMI JHARNA
AMI JHARNA
MIZBAH PATLA
My Role: User Researcher
Research Method: Ethnographic Research & Market Research
Project Type: Team
Project Timeline: 10 Weeks
Background
Traveling excites many but the pain planning and packing luggage bring are inevitable. It even causes stress amongst individuals and subsides the excitement of traveling. Hence, the goal of this project was to identify the pain points associated with luggage and eventually reinstate the joy of traveling. This project also helped drive the adoption of WSGN's 2020 trend of 'Luggage Free Travel'.
For the research process, the double diamond method was put to use. The double diamond method consists of 4 stages - Discover (insight into the problem), Define (the area of focus), Develop (potential solutions), and Deliver(solutions that work). Together, these stages work as a map to organize thoughts in order to improve the creative process.
Discover
Define
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Secondary Research
Market Identification
Design Criteria Brief
Online Survey
1:1 Interviews
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4 Empathy Maps
8 User Personas
Research Question
Value Propositon
Develop
Deliver
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Concept Development
Prototyping
User Testing
Product Vision Board
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Business Model
Brand Development
Final App Designs
Sales Promo Video
Discover
Secondary Research & Market Analysis
In the initial period of research, we as a team were looking at market areas that can provide an opportunity for us to establish a blue ocean strategy which essentially means identifying the white spaces in the current market and developing a successful business model.
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We started exploring 3 areas of the market we were interested in and began our secondary research in order to identify our strongest potential for a business opportunity eventually selecting Luggage Free Travel over others - highlights given below.
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Since ​the travel industry is already saturated with applications, products, and services, we wanted to explore the untapped potential spaces within this market. We started with a basic mind-map and zeroed down on luggage since it had a fresh appeal and held higher potential compared to others.
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Mind Map
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Porter's Five Forces is a simple but powerful tool for understanding the competitiveness of your business environment, and for identifying your strategy's potential profitability. Here, some of the existing competitors/substitutes were identified to determine the positioning of our subject.
Porter's Five Factors
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Based on secondary research and travelers who fly frequently, we deduced our stakeholders and categorized our audience into primary, secondary, and tertiary groups.
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Stakeholder's Map
Design Criteria Brief
Defining Network Users
This section of the process consisted of defining the network users by understanding their respective interests and their criteria for this project’s selection. It was then divided into two phases - one with an online survey taken by 94 participants from all the concerned stakeholders as well as in-person 1:1 interviews that gave us more of an insight into their needs, problems, and desires.
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To get started on our primary research, we drafted a simple yet direct survey to gauge what our audience thinks and feels about travel and its related issues. Along with sending a link to the survey, we made a flyer with a barcode and pinned them everywhere we could to get maximum responses. 94 people took our survey and here are some of the highlights.
Online Survey
1:1 Interviews
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This was an important segment for our primary research, of which the findings proved crucial for our project. We drafted an agenda and interviewed our stakeholders over a course of 10 days. To highlight a few of the insights from our personal interviews, here are some of the quotes from a segment of our target stakeholders.
Define
Data Analysis & Synthesis
At the conclusion of our primary research, we had generated an ample amount of data for the next steps of the project. We started our affinitization within each group and categorized them into various empathy maps and matrices.
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Empathy maps help with having a deeper understanding of one customer segment. It helped us jot down what our users were saying, thinking, feeling, hearing, and seeing. We could also identify their pains and gains and bucketed them for each group accordingly. These maps helped with building our user personas as well.
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The Umbrella Question
HOW MIGHT WE USE DESIGN THINKING TO PROVIDE LUGGAGE FREE EXPERIENCE FOR FASHION ENTHUSIASTS TRAVELING LONG DISTANCES FOR VACATIONS?
Sub - Questions
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What if fashion enthusiasts are assisted with a system that helps them organize and pack in an efficient manner, and customized to their needs?
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What if fashion enthusiasts are helped in curating their travel wardrobe as per their individual personalities and the conditions of their desired destination?
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What if fashion enthusiasts are enabled to travel luggage free, remodeling their commuting habits and enhancing their overall experience?
Value Proposition
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The empathy maps and user personas helped us realize and focus better on one customer segment that showed the most potential which is the Fashion Enthusiasts and Millennial community. We could then draft and refine our value proposition statement as follows:
Develop
Business Model & Brand Develop
In order to generate our own business model, we engaged in a number of creative workshops as given below. These helped in streamlining our insights and creating solutions that were tangible and coherent with our value proposition model stated earlier. For instance, the Five E's of user experience was a great way of building our business model canvas and understanding how a customer would interact with the product solution. It helped us brainstorm on our solution at every step of customer engagement and helped capture our thoughts in a more systematic model.
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Low - Fidelity Prototype & App Development
It was important for us to gauge what works and what doesn't and so we started off with basic paper prototypes and detailed out the function of every page. We asked our participants to comment on the structure, design, and service of the application and give us their feedback on notes attached to the frame they wanted to comment on.
This was an important phase of product development and the findings from this segment helped us refine and evolve our system into a sound product.
User Scenario
Product Vision Board
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In order to create a substantial product that was described earlier through our value proposition, we further defined the main touchpoints of who our target group is, what are their needs, how is the product designed, and what are its business goals in our product vision board.
Deliver
Business Model & Brand Development
While the Blue Ocean Strategy is about simultaneously increasing value while reducing costs, the business model canvas consists of a right-hand value and customer-focused side, and a left-hand cost and infrastructure side.
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The Brand Development too, entailed detailing out the brand essence, attributes, functional benefits, values as well as the branding guideline amongst others.
Introducing WearAbout
We wanted the brand name WearAbout to depict exactly what the product does - manage your luggage wherever you go. The name as it suggests is a subtle play on the word "Whereabout", which basically means the place where someone or something is.
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Once the low-fidelity mockups were tested, we improvised on the feedback given by our participants and designed a high-fidelity prototype with all the necessary changes in accordance with the set brand language.
On Boarding Process
Once you are on the app, all you have to do is add all your personal details and select the style you most resonate with. You then move onto adding your travel details such as the destination, hotel, travel dates, and the activities you would indulge in. Wearabout will then process this data would curate the ideal travel kit for you.
Self - Curated Travel Kits
You also have the option of curating your own style by uploading reference images of the style you most like and customizing your own travel kit from a range of items brought to you straight from hand-selected local boutiques.
Like it? Buy it.
Not only this, you can buy an outfit you like at a reduced cost in the clearance sale and can also filter/sort from the collection with just one click.
Sales Promo Video
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