A market place for finding businesses
DURATION
3 months (2022)
TEAM MEMBERS
Alipoe Isaac
ROLE
Product designer
Illustrator
TOOLS
Figma
Adobe illustrator
TL;DR
"The Directree" is a project aiming to replace the traditional paper-based Bahamian business directory with an innovative online platform. It comprises user and business apps, providing services like business listings, product sales, appointments, and event discovery. The initiative aims to boost convenience, engagement, and economic growth for locals and tourists. With strategic design, user personas, competition analysis, and testing, the project aims for user-friendly experiences and efficient business management. The solution sets the stage for scalability, better user interactions, and success in the Bahamas market.
Introduction
The Bahamas lacks an online directory for businesses and, services. So, I was approached to design the Directree, an online platform combining a directory with marketplace features like buying, selling, booking services and finding events. This summary focuses on the problem, solution and the project's nature.
Problem
The Bahamas currently relies on paper-based business directories for locating services, products, and events, which is outdated and inconvenient which does not support buying, selling and booking of appointments. There is a need for an online platform to replace the paper directory and provide e-commerce, appointment scheduling, and event listings. The challenge is to smoothly transition from paper to online while ensuring data accuracy, user experience, and adoption by businesses and users. By addressing these challenges, the proposed app has the potential to revolutionize the way locals and tourists interact with local businesses, products, services, and events in the Bahamas.
The idea of the product was to create 2 separate platforms:
Project scope
The Directree was envisioned to be accessible to everybody i.e, available as a web app and also a mobile app so users can access it at anytime, but for the sake of these case study I shall only be looking at the mobile apps. The product is divided into 2 separate mobile apps:
User app- The Directree
Ability to find businesses based on location.
Ability to find products based on location.
Ability to find services based on location.
Ability to buy items from businesses.
Ability to see business ratings.
Ability to book appointment from businesses.
Ability to save upcoming events.
Business app- The Directree for Business
Business owners can create a business profile.
Business owners can add products, services, or events they offer.
Business owners can take orders, and appointments.
Competitive analysis
For every business, there is most likely an existing market to tap from. Knowing what the existing competitors are offering is a crucial part for tapping into the market. I carried out competitive analysis on the existing market to discover what they offer, how their product works, and how I can improve what I was solutioning for.
User Personas
Knowing who your users is quite important to how a product works. The Bahamas is known for their tourism, therefore the app was targeted at the indigneous people of the Bahamas, tourists, and business owners
Designing a Solution that works
For a project as large as this, a lot of ideation and iterations have to be done before a final and beautiful result can be presented. I did a lot of paper iterations, to put my ideas down and picture the solution before delving into the designs properly. You can see some of sketches on the project architecture, user interfaces. Bear with me as they can be quite rough.
User app
The app offers quite a handful of services and it may become very confusing for users to able differentiate one service from the other. The main problem was organisation and differentiating a business from a product, service, and an event.
Business app
Each business can have products, services, and events. It was important that each of these items were grouped in separate tabs that were well labeled. These is essential for businesses that offer any of the 3 options to be able track each of them without any hassle. The main problem of the business app was tracking of items, orders, and appointments and this was solved by proper grouping.
Organization
A business is an entity and the product, services, or events are children of the business. I employed a mental model approach of both physical and online items to solving this issue. While I understood that initial use might be a bit confusing for a new user, I hoped they would understand after navigating through the app.
Employing this experience would help them bring their experiences from other platforms and the physical world, thereby reducing the learning curve on the app.
The idea was to create 3 different cards to differentiate the items.
User app- The Directree
Businesses were designed to be medium size cards, shorter than the rest of the other cards.
Products and services had smaller similar cards because they had similar attributes. They were designed to look like how product cards would look like on e-commerce platforms.
Events had a much more different look. I wanted them to look like posters so users could easily differentiate them from the others. They were much more larger than the rest.
Clear titles and Tabs
Since this was clearly a new market, it was very important that the user experience was as basic as they come. I did not want the users learning too many new things at a time. To reduce any form of confusion, I used clear titles and labels to differentiate these items and as well made sure these items were never mixed together, by creating separate tabs for search results when users search for items or navigate to the category page. This way if a user search for an item, they can select if they want results for business, products, services, or events.
Escrow system
The escrow system provided a means for accountability on both the buyer and seller side. The system which only worked for Products (not services as it may be physical) allowed both the buyer and the seller to confirm that an item has been delivered before funds are released to the seller. In the course of the transaction, if either party is not satisfied, a dispute can be filed and refund will be made.
Information Architecture
Proper organization for a product such as this is very essential. For structure and scalability, it is important that the platform is properly and organized and structured as this may come in very handy in the future when more features are built on the platform. A lot of brainstroming was done before I designed the architecture of the platform; how features are grouped and named, addition of new features, and how accessible they are to the users.
Userflow
Building a platform such as this can be quite complicated. You most likely do not know what a user will be using the app for as there are myriad of things a user can do. It is therefore very important that the flow for performing any of their actions are as seamless as they come, eliminating any form of distraction that might disrupt the users action.
Design system
For every new project I work on, the most important thing I do first before embarking on the solution and the UI designs is to create a Design system or a style guide. For this project I created a Design system called "Tree Guide" on figma. The Tree Guide contained instructions, colors, iconogrpahy, typography, forms, buttons, alert bars, cards, modals, shadows, spacing and grids. Each item was tokenized with clear instructions on how, and when they should be used. This is essential for uniformity, scalability, consistency of the platform.
Location
Location settings was used to tailor user experience. Businesses, products, services, and events were displayed based on the user's location.
Category organization
Preventing human error either through slips or mistakes is quite important. I used well labeled tabs, and card sizes to organize and differentiate the items displayed to the users.
USER APP
BUSINESS APP
User testing
User app
I tested the product with users with keen expectation on how they were able to differentiate businesses, from products and events. I gave 5 people the prototype to go test ,divided into 2 groups.
Group A
2 testers.
No idea what they were testing for.
Insight
Was able to understand the app by navigating through it.
Business and Events looked similar but events could be bigger to differentiate them.
Group B
3 testers.
Had clear objectives on what to do.
Insight
No problem navigating through the app.
Wanted the check out page to show the items before authorizing payment.
Business app
For the business app, I tested with 2 business owners and had them navigate through the platform. They had no issues and praised the simplicity of the flow.
Though the test size was quite small, the goal in the long run is to get enough user feedback when the product launches to improve and scale it better.
Highlights
Each project I undertake becomes a journey of learning, presenting me with fresh experiences and chances to grow. This particular endeavor led me learn about the cultural intricacies of the Bahamian people. For me, the pursuit of knowledge is unending, and this venture held a distinct significance. The success of a platform lies on its seamless functionality and the user perception. The Bahamas, a lively nation known for its rich culture and tourism, significantly influenced my design approach. While my inclination was to maintain minimalism in the designs, I recognized the need to infuse vibrancy and identity that would resonate effectively with the intended audience.
Also, I enjoyed having creative control over the entire project. It can be quite overwhelming but I was glad I could work on the identity, design system, information architecture, userflows, UIs, interactions, and user testing myself.
Retrospect
While I did enjoy working on every aspect of this project, I believed I could have done better in some aspect to further learn and shape my approach towards the problem.
For instance, for the magnitude of this project, I did not carry out any user interviews, or surveys directly with the Bahamian populace. My approach was solely based on studies and interactions with people close to me. I do hope that when the project launches, I will get enough feedback from the Bahamian populace.
Also, animations and micro-interactions can be better in the future. I went with a simple approach and minimized animations as much as possible. While I added some vibrancy to the UIs, I did not want to overwhelm the users with too many interactions and distractions at the same time.
Conclusion
The goal of every corporation worldwide is to develop a functional product that generates revenue. I successfully crafted a functional product that offers the owner potential for future scalability. This product was carefully designed to strike a balance between business objectives and delivering an exceptional user experience. As we await user feedback, it's gratifying to note that the product is built on a robust foundation, poised for expansion. Armed with thorough documentation and comprehensive guidelines, the product is well-positioned to grow both in terms of design and market reach.
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