Dispatch Goods

UX Designer and Researcher

1 Week Sprint

Solo Independent Contributor

Problem Space

Dispatch Goods is a sustainable reusable to-go container company looking to reduce the impact on the environment of a much-loved ritual of many working people's lives, take out. Live in SF or interested in sustainability, check them out here! Dispatch Goods is looking into the best way to get reusable containers to consumers and track them to reduce theft or loss of the containers. After initial talks with restaurants, they are looking to see if a simple QR scanner on the container user's end, would be a viable way to keep as few containers from going missing as possible.

My Role

During this project, I was the Founding UX Designer and Researcher. I designed and facilitated a design sprint and was hired Full time after successful conclusion of the sprint. For this sprint I gathered the interviewees, conducted the interview, made the wireframes, and developed the physical objects to be interacted with by the participants. I took all the findings, synthesized them, and then communicated them back to the engineering team, design team, and CEO.

Monday: Plan

I spent Monday talking with all of my stakeholders, including my CEO, CFO, and Engineering Director to see what the issues they were trying to solve on this one-week sprint. They wanted to develop a web app that could be used to track users’ use of reusable containers, thus putting the input/tracking on the user instead of the restaurant. This was due to previous talks with restaurant stakeholders specifying they would be hesitant to add additional steps to their current workflow to provide reusables to customers. The containers were expensive so the worry was that people would keep them and the loss rate would be high enough that replacements would be costly. These were the core goals they had decided I was to explore during my sprint.

Reveal friction points for target users. Will our target users engage with our PWA? What would prevent them from using reusable?

Test QR Concept on Potential Users. Seeing as our MVP is centered around the ability to track the boxes from the restaurant to the user back to the collection. Is having the User as the point of contact the best solution?

Tuesday: Source

Outreach & Screening participants were sourced from multiple different outlets to source the correct target users. I used both in-person and social media outreach to get participants for our study before we had a hard user base. For my in-person outreach I emailed and LinkedIn messaged with my network of people from previous networking events. As for my social media out reach I posted on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and utilized Reddit, specifically r/Samplesize, to find candidates for testing. Each potential candidate was sent a screener survey. The criteria for target users to test the PWA were aged 24-34, college-educated, working professionals, and attempting sustainability in their everyday lives. These were the parameters selected by my internal stakeholders on Monday.

Wednesday: Design

The Initial Designs were predicated on the fewest number of steps to get the user in control of their to-go container. After initial discussions with the stakeholders, we were left with these 6 screens accessed by scanning a physical sign. I designed this wireframe as bare bones, ‘basalmiqesque’, as possible because I wanted to test the action and screens more than the color and feel. The screens were limited to these 6 because we wanted to test the fewest possible screens to see if the user would be willing to do the bare minimum for what was decided as for the PWA’s MVP. We needed some form of login for tracking the particular user, we needed a camera function to scan the box QR, we needed a way to capture credit card info, and lastly, the stakeholders wanted to deploy some form of incentive to continue usage of the reusables.

Screens

Prototype Box & Credit Card

I had built a physical prototype of the container and a fake credit card in order to test the users ability and willingness to use the PWA. Since this is an app to engage with a physical product I wanted the actions to feel more genuine as they would if they were at the restaurant picking up their food.

Thursday: Test

The first step of the usability testing was an ethnographic test, where general questions about their current habits were asked. This is where we gained insight into whether they seemed to fit our target early adopters and target early majority as well as gave us insight into what our early majority would need to bridge the chasm between the two groups. Since the initial screeners were purposefully so general this was where I asked more detailed questions and dug a little more into their job, degree, and current sustainability habits. Next, I made a list of tasks I asked the participants to perform. Use the QR code to gain access to the web app login and scan their boxes, re-login, and scan boxes again. I then asked these questions to participants after the test to gain a deeper understanding of how they felt about the product overall. What sort of challenges did you encounter? Did you have any unanswered questions? Please explain. Can you explain how your individual needs were met? Would you use this product? What if it costs money?

Results in Depth

Core Concept Understanding

On-boarding and QR Scanning in PWA/App

“If this is [at] every single place that I’m going to, I would to get an app.”
-Wilson

“I would be inclined to but I personally don’t have a QR reader on my phone.”
-Victoria

Friday: Findings for Stakeholders and Re-Design

Friday:
Findings for
Stakeholders
and Re-Design

Key Findings

Will our target users engage with our platform?

No, all of the potential users tested wouldn’t engage with the QR codes on signs.

What would prevent them from using reusable?

Most of the users said they wouldn’t use the containers if the containers 1) cost them extra or 2) added extra steps to their transaction

Is having the user as the point of contact the best solution?

No, the user is extremely hesitant to engage with the app.

The most important finding that was learned from this research project is that user would NOT engage with random QR codes due to being skeptical about them in general and because they did not believe their phones had the ability to do so outside of downloading a 3rd party app (this was even though they had the capabilities via iOS 11 or Android 8 Oreo). Any additional steps that were added to a check out experience were for the most part going to be ignored or not engaged with.

Redesign to Reflect Branding

Learned

The biggest learn for me as a designer from this round of user testing and user research is that it is always better to schedule as many people as possible for user testing. The number of cancellations I had was about 50% and while it kept me at my goal for user testing of 5 people, it feel shy of the stretch goal I wanted of 7. I also learned the importance of follow up before the interviews to really make sure I am having participants who will show thus a email or text the week prior, then the day before, and then day of text to make sure we are still on track for our meetings.

I also had really great success with what I am dubbing the ‘ethnographic’ section of my interviews. By this I mean where I ask basic questions about the participants lives before digging into the actual process I want them to go through. Compared to previous research projects I believe I got a much more authentic understanding by starting with easier and more personal questions to relax them before diving into the technical side of the interview.

Post Sprint -> Full-time Hire

After finishing my sprint I was hired full time! I was able to take what we had learned from the research and the business made the decision to go B2B, in which we partnered with Yelp and surrounding restaurants to provide re-usables to their employees during their lunches. During my time with the DispatchxYelp launch I had many hats and some of the key things I managed and built are as follows;

-Built their internal tracking system so they could track usage and loss

-Managed all logistics for re-usable pick-up and sanitation

-Managed and built the custom emails for all internal and external stake holders via MailChimp by utilizing my previously built tracking system to inform everyone on the usage metrics including the amount of plastic and oil we had saved!

-Designed all the fliers and photographed all the assets needed for our Instagram and other marketing channels

-Built intake forms for our next partnership with Square Pie Guys

-Led all continued research activities including but not limited to surveys, focus groups, and I even convinced my CFO and CEO to come join me on some guerilla research projects

-Designed initial iterations for their website

-Was the lead in vendor management with the individual restaurants as well as sourced new additions to our offerings

-Sourced new partners for expansion to new clients in downtown S.F. (Deliotte and Atlassian)

Dispatch Goods

Dispatch Goods

Problem Space

My Role

Monday: Plan

Tuesday: Source

Wednesday: Design

Wednesday: Design

Screens

Prototype Box & Credit Card