The reflection of my 1st UX project in Seattle: How can we reduce last-mile emissions for Gen X living in suburban Seattle areas when buying groceries?
Introduction
- My role on the team: UX Researcher and Designer, Project Manager
- Other team member’s roles: 1) Developer and UX Designer; 2) Business analyst and Product Manager
- The design question of this project: How can we reduce last-mile emissions for Gen X living in suburban Seattle areas when buying groceries? Reason for focusing on that space
Approach & Results
The approaches we adopted included secondhand research, brainstorming, field observation, affinity diagram, and survey.
Although I had worked as a UX researcher at some world-leading technology companies, such as Binance and Acer, I still learned a lot in the Seattle-based project.
Approach and results of secondary research & what I learned about that method and what I’d do differently next time
The secondhand research for the following research
- Secondary research or desk research is a research method that involves using already existing data. Existing data is summarized and collated to increase the overall effectiveness of the research. I am experienced in secondhand research, but this project was not an academic research project but a practical and experimental UX project. Therefore, I had to adopt an understandable way to present the insight from the research papers.
Approach and results of primary research & what I learned about that method and what I’d do differently next time
Brainstorming to narrow down the research topic
- Brainstorming is a creative process for generating ideas that encourage quantity over quality and discourages criticism and evaluation. The initial topic of this study is broad: carbon dioxide emission, so I spent more time than I thought conducting secondhand research. Some bottlenecks included that I was not a resident of Seattle’s suburban areas. I had no idea about their living preference and behavior, so I had to take a step back to study the background information.
- Fortunately, one of our team members lives in the target area, so I consulted him about the overall shopping preferences and behavior of Gen X in Seattle’s suburban areas. After the discussion, I figured out several keywords we could use in this study.
Field observation to collect the first-hand information
- Field observation is a qualitative research method that helps to gain an inside view of the community and the setting. Before the field observation, it was important to gauge if the factors we planned to observe were easy to collect by only observation with no interaction with the subjects. The initial observation failed because it was difficult to tell if a customer was Gen X parent or not (our initial design question focused on Gen X parents).
Affinity diagram to group and converge ideas
- An affinity diagram is an organized output from a brainstorming session. By adopting the affinity diagram, I could think structurally but still, keep flexibility.
- It was because of the nature feature that the affinity diagram could be held flexibly that I had to set a clear time with my teammates for the discussion. If I had a chance to do it again, I would collect at least 150% more data for the affinity diagram discussion. Enough quality input for the affinity diagram discussion is a key to output.
Survey to collect replies from the target users
- A survey is a research method used for collecting data from a predefined group of respondents to gain information and insights into various topics of interest. It took more time to collect enough replies even if the study invited the suburban residents to invite their friends and colleagues to fill out the form. If I had a chance to conduct the survey again, I would invite feedback providers with zip codes of our target areas to invite people they know in the same areas to filter out our survey questionnaire.
Requirements phase: what I did to pull together my insights into the requirements
Mixed-methods research is crucial to determine user preferences and expectations for new products. I usually gather my insights into requirements through a combination tool portfolio of qualitative and quantitive methods. Some examples of transforming insights into requirements are as follows.
- Among all the respondents, 57.1% of grocery store shopping is unplanned -> I considered the scenario of both planned and unplanned groceries shopping.
- 47.6% of respondents shop for groceries for children -> It was worth considering offering children necessities on the feed page.
- The distance between respondents’ homes and groceries store varies. To illustrate, a distance below 4 miles is acceptable -> It was worth considering the scenario of getting urgent groceries within a mile.
- 9 am -1 pm is the most popular time, whether it is a weekend or not.
- Among these parents, they buy groceries for 3.45 people on average -> It was worth considering the scenario of buying for 4 people.
Ideation & Prototype
Ideation: what I did to come up with ideas I wanted to build
Paper-pen-based storyboards and post-it were used to ideate our user-centered solution. Three scenarios were selected, but eventually, we focused on two scenarios because these fitted the minimum viable product principles- high demand and urgent.
Based on two scenarios, the first version of the user flow was developed via Figma to collaborate remotely. However, the first version took work to understand.
Afterward, our team made user flow iterations to keep the overall user flow concise and understandable.
Prototype & Evaluation: My approach to what I build and the evaluation. What I learned from the test and what I learned about testing itself
In the user testing part, participants gave us valuable feedback such as some routes didn’t make sense and some functions on the same page were confusing. Another thing was to insert related pictures and take out unnecessary functional buttons.
Techniques used: brainstorming, sketching, user journey, card-sorting individual work, and teamwork
Traditional techniques such as brainstorming, sketching, user journey, card sorting, individual work, and teamwork were adopted in this study. Brainstorming, sketching, user journey, and card sorting help us ideate and iterate when the task was still vague initially, we teamwork to define the action items. Once we defined a checkpoint, each team member’s responsibility, and the scale and topic of the task, we did individual work because we all had other tasks to do, like one team member had to operate his start-up company.
Impact & Reflection
Impact of remote teamwork
- The advantages of remote teamwork for this project are that 1) we were able to manage our time and effort individually; 2) we were able to start a quick meeting anytime whether at the home office or the third place.
- The disadvantages of remote teamwork for this project are 1) It was easy to miss a meeting because the team didn’t have to meet in person; 2) We didn’t share all our work schedules via Google calendar. Thus, once a team member could not participate in a checkpoint meeting, rescheduling it took time.
- If a team wants to adopt remote teamwork, I suggest the team talk about the expectation on time and effort their team members want to contribute. If team members didn’t sync their expectations, that would have a negative impact on the team and project. For example, in some scenarios, a team member might want to rest and skip the messages from other team members. However, a passive team member might hurt morale…
Self-discipline is a factor that somewhat impacts the quality of a project!
Reflection on my work — what went well, what was hard, what was easy, what I’d do again, and how I would apply what I did to future projects. (Comment using the Design Concept Framework from week 9)
- Multidisciplinary teamwork
I randomly formed a team with my teammates. I have a UX background with work experience. Another team member has a design background and is running his start-up business as a product manager. The other team member is a developer with work experience in the tech industry. We are from different countries from different backgrounds. To smoothly run multidisciplinary teamwork is always challenging. If I had a chance to do it again, I would arrange a team-building time in the beginning to make team members familiar with each other.
- Framing and re-framing the problem
It took time and effort to frame and reframe the problem, and it was hard to tell if you were almost there. If I had a chance to do it again, I would discuss it with peers or mentors in our field. Sometimes if I was stuck at a certain point, I had to talk to other experienced experts for some hints and exchange ideas with them.
- Iteration & Experimentation
I do not doubt doing more iterations and experimentation. If I had a chance to do it again, I would set a pilot round usability test with different participant segmentation groups.
- Convergent and divergent thinking
With the design thinking tools, I performed well at divergent thinking; however, it was different when doing convergent thinking. It took work to persuade my teammates. If I had a chance to do it again, I would at least set a strict time and goal to push everyone to think.
- Analysis & synthesis
Analysis and synthesis took time, but our team didn’t do it well. They considered receiving data everything, but it was just the beginning of analysis and synthesis. If I had a chance to do it again, I would break down the analysis and synthesis tasks and assign the subtasks to some team members.
- Comfortable with ambiguity
It took a lot of work to overcome the feeling of ambiguity when I was in charge of a project as a user researcher. If I had a chance to do it again, I would sync with my team members on to what extent we could accept.
Takeaways
An overall reflection on Design Thinking: how this mindset and methods will or won’t change my approach to problem-solving in the future; the aspects of DT that I thought were most/ least valuable.
The design thinking is a process along with many recipes of frameworks. I have adopted some design thinking tools for about four years, and I believe it is important to iterate the design questions, especially when I receive data from a bit of research and study; it is the best time to iterate design questions. “Don’t be lazy”- I will shout at this stage- it is the best time to define and adjust your research.
Moreover, a team still has to think about technology and business to be successful project. It is creative to adopt design thinking, and a team can usually produce a good amount of results, but in the meantime, some team members might want to adopt all the features the team generated. Therefore, it is still necessary to think of the limitations.
Reference
- Link to video of the prototype
- Relevant images
