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Bloombox

-Google Venture Design sprint

Project Details

Group Members: 5

Role: Interviewer

Duration: 5 days (first week of UX/UI Design course)

Background

Bloombox is a floristry that specialises in unique flower arrangements in personalised boxes. Our project was to redesign and test the website (paper prototype version) following the Google Venture Design Sprint. It was also our first week of the course so it was also an intense introduction to UX/UI design and to each other.

Day 1: Map

  1. Research: explore, immerse, observe, interview.

    • The first task we had was to split our team between observers/interviewers and interviewees. I was an observer so I watched a couple of other group members navigate through the website for the first time, gave tasks while discussing their expectations as they moved around the site.

    • We summarised the qualitative and quantitative data which had been pre-done for us; we also spent time familiarising ourselves with the website and business.

  2. Long-term goal: The overall objective of the company was given to us as:

    • ​“They want the shopping experience to be as simple, fresh, and fun as their flower boxes are.”

  3. Assumptions: We reviewed our research notes and concluded the user assumptions to be:

    • "No confidence in what I’m buying."

    • "No confidence in freshness."

    • "Not customisable in buying."

    • "Lack of realness."

  4. Questions: Then we turned those assumptions into questions and selected the main Sprint questions to focus on:

    • Where can I see the product?

    • How can I be sure the product is fresh?

    • How can I be sure the process is fun?

    • How do I know that the product exists? Where are the products?

      • Sprint Question 1: Where is the product?

      • Sprint Question 2: How can I personalise my gift/flowers?

  5. Map: Next, we mapped the current user flow of the website.​​

   6. HMW (How might we?): We individually wrote HMWs, sorted them, and voted for the most important ones. 

  7. Target: We chose a customer and step on the map to focus on:  First time buyers; customising the flowers and box.

User Journey

How might we

Notes

Day 2: Sketch

  1. Lightning Demos: We began by individually finding inspirational websites (similar but not competing) and then shared the main ideas to the team in under 3 minutes. At the same time, someone sketched the ideas on the board as they were presented. I chose a personalised t-shirt company (​https://www.spreadshirt.co.uk/create-your-own?productType=857&appearance=1) as I liked how users are able to toggle between pre-set designs, upload designs, and write their own text  while also being in control of the typography.

Design Inspiration

Lightning Demos

2.    The rest of the day was spent individually working through different stages in order to come up with the a few         sketches.

      The Four Steps

  • Notes: 20 minutes was spent reviewing all notes, materials, and goals from the past 24 hours.

  • Ideas: Another 20 minutes was spent doodling rough solutions and a mind map.

  • Crazy 8: As a class, we were given 8 minutes to draw 8 pictures based from our ‘ideas’.

  • Sketch: Finally, we sketched a three-panel story board (3 post-its on A4 paper) using our Crazy 8 ideas as our basis.

Crazy 8

Day 3: Decide

  1. Art Museum: We posted our sketches around the room and silently moved around analysing them. Each member had approximately 20 stickers to place on elements or whole sketches that they liked. Questions were placed on post-it notes under the sketches.

  2. Heat Map: After everyone had finished viewing all the sketches, we stood back as a group to see the ‘hot spots’ —  i.e the sketches which clearly had the most interest.

  3. Speed Critique: One of our teacher assistants described the sketches in 3minutes per page. After each one we discussed our questions and thoughts and the designer stayed silent until the end when they are given 1 minute to make any clarifications.

  4. Straw poll: Each member was given two stickers (different from the heat map stickers) to make their final vote on the design we would use for the prototype.  Interestingly enough, design which formerly had only 2 heat map stickers, after the Speed Critque and Starw Poll, was tied in second place.

  5. Super Vote: As our winning design only focused on half of our prototype, we wanted to include our runner up as well With a tie for the second place we needed to use our ‘decider’ to make the final decision of which second design to use.

  6. Storyboard: Working with our two designs, we drew up a storyboard of our conceived user journey.

 

Art Museum

Story Board

Day 4: Prototype

We divided our group into specific roles:

- Maker : created individual components; labour intensive

- Writer : wrote all content.

- Asset Collector:  found photos and icons online to use.

- Stitcher :  collected everything and ‘stitched’ all pieces together; ensured consistency between the  different elements

- Interviewer : prepared questions and script on Thursday; interviewed on Friday.

I was given the Interview role and spent my time reading GV Design Sprint Interview materials and watching their  available videos, taking notes, and reworking those notes into an interview dialogue using our objective. The script stayed true to the following:

Act I: Friendly welcome

Act II: A series of general, open-ended context questions about the customer

Act III: Introduction to prototype

Act IV: Detailed tasks to get customer reacting and responding to the website

Act V: A quick debrief to capture the customers overarching thoughts and impressions​

Interview tips —

  • Set tone: establish rapport; comfortable = honesty = good data = good insights

  • Set agenda: give expectations and always allow tester to back out

  • Ask for permission: Ask if you can use their quotes; thank them for accepting the recording

  • Promote discovery: tell them where you want them to end up; don’t navigate

  • Ask what and why: “What do you expect that to do?”; pair actions with thoughts

  • Ask open-ended questions: don’t present choices

  • Be an objective observer: leave assumptions, expectations, decisions at the door.

Day 5: Interview

Finally it was time to put our prototype to the test. We had time for three tests, each took around 15 minutes and was followed by an intense debrief. By the end of the testing session, and after making several changes throughout the day, although the main 'Personalise Your Box' flow was was finally working as we had hoped, it was clear that we still needed to look at the 'inspirational flowers' navigational flow. 

Final Words of the GV Design Sprint

The  GV Design Sprint was an amazing experience as it brought together a bunch of individuals, pushed egos aside, and proved the beauty of working together as a team. Did we finish with a perfect website? Of course not, but our project proved we were able to adapt and grow our shared ideas to create something that did work. Afterwards we agreed to the changes we would make in the future to make it even more successful. Furthermore, we learnt that it was even more than our team - our testers were the most important element of the design process, without them our design suffered from serious flaws, with them we were able to create the best user experience for BloomBox.

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