LamstMart - A product that is committed to discovering new urban lifestyles.
Project
As the number of mix-use shopping malls has risen over the years in China, it seems that young people were somewhat bounded to a fixed series of entertainments when they go out: go to movies, dine-out, go to karaoke or online shopping. The niche markets of characteristic small businesses have been undermined and LamstMart aims to bring new urban lifestyles by providing "offline" temporary open markets.
I am the sole product designer in this project. I firstly conducted user research , and conceptualized and identified the product requirement, and then designed user flow, UI and prototypes. I also worked closely with co-founder Razi Zhang to negotiated features for launch by balancing user needs with technical feasibilities and business goals.
My Role
Involvement
Product Concept
User Research - Interview, Persona
Lead Design - Wireframes & Prototypes
Project Team
Razi Zhang, Calvin Qiu
Duration
2018.8 - present
Problems & Initial Objectives
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Provide high-quality branding & dynamic contents in the product with the focus of "online to offline" UX
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Cater for young people (college students?): what are their needs? Is this a social-focused offline marketplace for people? Are we creating new interactions and/or social and fun places for young people? How about creating new shopping experiences? → what are the potential brands?
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Lower suppliers content costs to maximize efficiency of supply chain.
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How technology can help us to achieve customized contents/ products for people’s needs?
Competitive Analysis
We started out with researching existing products to learn the pros and cons and get ahold of what would be some important things we need to consider and inform research.
App Store
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Clearly defined structure of apps and articles
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Content comes from user contributions, user-friendly to all levels of users
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Potentially increase feed with more recommendation "cards"
Airbnb - Experience
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Easy to use structure that separate different services - home, exp, restaurants
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Clean looks of products with double drawer system that illustrates user reviews, prices
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Possibly to add articles with recommendations
YohoMars
WoodStock (伍德吃托克)
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Easily digestible layouts of events, activities, shops, restaurants and more
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Detailed intro to each store and place
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Potentially to add recommendation layouts and reward system for users
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Combine O2O experiences by offline gatherings and online marketing of various platforms
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Add mobile version with information on events ,featured shops and engage users
User Research - Interviews
By analyzing current solutions that might relevant to our product, a series of questions were developed to investigate our target demographics:
a) Who are our potential major users? (college students and young people?)
b) Understand young people's perception of the existing malls and their shopping habits, and potentially find new needs associated with that?
c) Understand consumer patterns of target groups and find the demands and pain points
d) Find out what excites users? Cultural influence? What are the IPs or things interest them?
Razi and I conducted user interviews, evaluating and interviewing 15 individuals within our target demographic of 18–30 year olds on their entertainment habits, preferences, and dislikes. Sample questions are as follows:
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Are you interested in creative retail spaces (e.g. open market)?
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Can you describe the most recent experience of participating in creative retailing?
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Are there other interesting experiences/ events that you would like to share with us?
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Have you been shopping/shopping recently? If so, when was the last time you went shopping?
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Can you describe to us in details about your last purchases? Including the brand, why, and what did you finally get? How often do you attend these activities?
Interview notes
Synthesize Information & Personas
Analyzing from the user interviews, two personas were generated based on our user profiles. Basically, we have two type of users, visitors who come to the market or shops and shop owners who display and sell their products in open markets.
User Flow
The personas and research insights informed us to make a simple, easy to use task flow that matches the needs for three types of users of the product.
Ideation
After getting familiar with the scenarios of "visitors", I started to sketch out solutions.
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What are the main structures for the app? Discover feed with a search function?
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What are the components/ contents in the feed? topics, market info and others?
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How to structure the feed information to maximize the business goals and product positioning?
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How to differentiate the usages for discover (feed) and search?
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Should we incorporate vendor side on this stage of the product?
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How to display the market page with lists of information?
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Since the target users are mostly young people who at owns mobile apps, we decided to design the product for mobile platform first. Below shows a version of the wireframe designed.
Search
A portal for users to search their preferences. There are four modules at play when they do not enter their search queries:
1) The featured topics that leads to a series of popular groups of shops, for example, dessert shops.
2) Display three rows of market infos for "call-to action"
3) Editor's Picks of a range of shops
4) A number of topics to attract users
Article
A piece of an article template for showcasing coming vents or shops on sale in greater detail, with an introduction and/ or comments below to let the users mark down.
Market template
This is the main template for demonstrating the "open market" event. Followed by location, time and contents, a series of introductory features, lists of shops attend, locations of each section as a carefully designed architecture plan are displayed. Users can buy the event ticket in the app by clicking on the "call-to-action" button stays at the bottom. And the similar markets recommendations are also at the bottom of the page to guide users.
Shop
This is the place where shop owners have the freedom to show the features of their place. Followed by a series of photos and reviews, users will have a chance to get ahold of the shop contents before they make a decision to attend the market or directly go to that place.
Discover
A portal and introduction to the whole app. For wow factor and to immediately sell the amazing events and markets featured on the app. Several components break down to showcase the variety of shops available for users. The modules are designed by topics, shop recommendations, articles and events.
Topic
This is the template under "editor's picks" or "featured" that showcase a range of shops relevant to the themes, in this case, this is the series of characteristic cafés that users like the most for reviews.
Search result
When users type in the search, the pop-up page will showcase "recent searches" and "trending topics" for a lead to the contents we want them to see. After users enter the text, there are smart suggestions for the keywords with markets and shops. For example, the "food" will also lead to suggestion of "café" if there is not enough keyword suggestion directly related.
The search result template, similar to the "search" main page, has clearly defined structures of elements: on the top is the markets, the main services of the products. Followed by the lists of the shops in which we market and the last are the recommended topics that is relevant to the searches. Users can always tap the home tab to go back to the main page if they want to start a new search
Reflection and Next Steps
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Conduct user testing on different groups of users: visitors, vendors and sponsors to refine the prototypes
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Redesign "feature" section: should it be category oriented like festivals for instance?
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By introducing popular items, how should the items and shops coexist in the feed? What are the information hierarchy?
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Redesign account tab by integrating business goals: should it have "check-in" tab for users who checked in some of the stores as an achievement
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Design single category page for markets/ shops/ editor's pick, etc.
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Interview some shops who are willing to participate "open market" and possibly design a vendor version app.