Pop Bakery is a web platform designed to match creators with small and medium-sized businesses for cooperation.
Timeline:
Apr.2022 - July.2022
My Role:
UX UI design
Design strategy
User research
Interaction Design
Scope:
Design Thinking
Problem framing
Concept Ideation
Prototyping
UI animations
User testing
OVERVIEW - UNDERSTAND MY GOAL
CURRENT SITUATION
In the early days, creator marketing was strictly the domain of large brands with household names. Slowly but surely, small and medium-sized businesses(SMBs) are getting their chance to give creator marketing a shot. Many creator marketing platforms that matched businesses with creators mushroomed these years, with sophisticated offerings, such as discovery, management, analytics features, etc. However, my assumption is simple: given the low-profile, low-budget nature of SMBs, it's not easy to utilize these platforms and participate in creator marketing.
GOAL
My goal for this project was to design a website to match creators with small and medium businesses for cooperation. I only focus on the SMBs-side at this time, dedicated to helping them get out of their inferior state when trying to find a creator to expand their product reach. Not only this, but I also would like to empower SMBs to understand and improve their creator marketing campaign after using this platform.
Discover
Competitive Analysis
I did some research to see if I can leverage any insights into features and functions for informing my design decisions. I compared eight different creator marketplace products that are aimed at SMBs regarding their key features, flows, and feelings. This chart shows the key features that will greatly affect the user experience:
Click to see details 👆
KEY FINDINGS
Expensive.
Although they are creator marketplace designed for SMBs. The monthly subscription fees are high with few cost-effective features.
The users are unlikely to complete the task successfully.
On the one hand, users may not know how to use it, for many products have complex features but lack operational guidance. On the other hand, the page layout of some products has poor readability and unclear expressions.
Poor data visualization.
5 out of 8 products have the campaign, audience, or creator analytics tools. But too much information and data were given in the analytical section, it's difficult for users to relate the data on graphs and diagrams to the solutions for their campaign.
Uniform services make it impossible to meet the needs of SMBs in different situations.
Many products do not consider exceptions, resulting in less comprehensive scenarios covered by the product. Different businesses will have different needs given their industry, stage, budget, interests, etc.
Understand the User
Even though creator marketing needs two sides, namely the businesses and the creators, to make the deal. The scope of this project only focuses on the SMBs-side of the platform, the operation of the creator side of the platform was not involved.
So, our target users are small and medium-sized businesses.
Qualitative data from interviews and observations: Why it is happening
From the previous competitive analysis, I found that learning the needs of SMBs is the most critical part of designing this product. To get more detailed insight, I interviewed three small business owners. A food truck owner, a hand-made candle entrepreneur, and a board game store owner. All of them have used some services to match up with a creator but were not satisfied with those services.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
-
Users' priorities when intending to participate in the creator marketing
-
Users' needs when picking creators
-
Why do users use a platform to help them with this process
1. When understanding their priorities, I found one of the challenges they faced, which made them really frustrated and self-doubt.
Finding:
-
Respect and fairness are priorities.
-
Low-profile and low-budget SMBs could hardly be selected to collaborate with creators.
"They don’t even wanna learn about us, because we bring nothing to them..."
- Alex Collins, a board game store owner
"We go around at different places, so It’s important to distinguish yourself online and to let people know you. I sometimes would scroll on Instagram and invite others for reviews. But very few creators like to do this..."
- Megan, a Taiwanese food truck owner in Seattle
2. Then I began to think deeper about users' needs when picking creators.
Finding:
Lack of non-basic information.
Basic information can be found on social media platforms.
There is a lack of these kinds of non-basic information.
3. But what non-basic information is needed?
The answer is:
THEY DON'T KNOW!
That's why they need a platform to help them.
Findings:
-
SMBs don’t understand how to measure creators' performance to best promote their campaigns.
-
SMBs can’t identify useful information when superfluous information is provided.
"I used that kind of website once, but it looked too messy and I didn't understand the statistics very well, so I ended up forgetting about all those services. I found Internet creators through friends’ introductions, and I am okay with just promoting once at a time..."
- Jessica Liu, a home-made candle entrepreneur
4. How should my platform help them?
Findings:
-
SMBs can't get highly specific about their target audience.
Don’t know their niche.
Don’t know how to discover their audience's behavior.
"It’s a small business or it’s more like a hobby, whoever is interested is appreciated..."
- Alex Collins, a board game store owner
-
SMBs can't get highly specific about the goals of their marketing campaign.
Don't know which stage their business is at.
Rarely preplan a timeline to achieve the goals.
Rarely set goals that fit into their overall business plan.
"I wanna say I do go for a little bit for marketing. But as I don’t invest much, I usually settle for whatever the result is. You know, those candles can never sell like hotcakes..."
- Jessica Liu, a home-made candle entrepreneur
User Journey
After I've observed and interviewed my users, I used a user journey map to map out all the pain points that emerged. The stages defined are based on the existing products.
GOALS
-
Extract the users' pain points and see where the problems are.
-
Find if there is a trigger event that causes their goals.
-
Find what emotions they experienced.
PAIN POINTS
USER GOALS
1. Can't get highly specific about the goals of their marketing campaign.
1a. I can find my campaign goals and get control of my campaign.
1b. I don't need to learn how to read the statistics of the campaign.
2. Can't get highly specific about
the target audience of their products.
2. I can easily learn what are the specialties and behaviors of my target audience.
3. Can't find non-basic information when deciding to pick which creator.
3a. I can learn what kind of ads attract people.
3b. I want to learn how my competitors do creator marketing.
4. Can hardly be selected to collaborate with creators.
4a. I can be Party A when selecting my ideal creators.
4b. I can easily understand the creator's info and find the most appropriate creator.
After this, I made the design goal clearer:
HMW enable the low-budget SMBs to afford the services that help them successfully collaborate with creators as well as get highly specific about their campaign goals and target audience?
Design
USER GOAL #1
1a. I can find my campaign goals and get control of my campaign.
1b. I don't need to learn how to read the statistics of the campaign.
METRICS
-
Task Success Rate
-
Perceived Success
-
Customer Satisfaction Index
DESIGN CHALLENGE
HMW empower SMBs to find their campaign goals and manage their campaign?
SOLUTION #1
The Landing + Goals Finder
Help the SMBs to clarify their campaign goal(s):
-
Easy-to-choose current scenarios
-
Help from representatives
-
Finally lead to a professional auto-generated campaign plan
USER GOAL #2
I can easily learn what are the specialties and behaviors of my target audience.
METRICS
-
Task Success Rate
-
Customer Satisfaction Index
DESIGN CHALLENGE
HMW empower SMBs to get highly specific about their target audience?
SOLUTION #2
Audience Mapping
Learn about their audience demographics and their potential niche by reading user-selected databases that can be uploaded or connected:
-
Special insights analyzed by our site about SMBs' target audience specialties and behaviors.
-
Brain-friendly data visualization by showing interactive graphs.
USER GOAL #3
3a. I can learn what kind of ads attract people.
3b. I want to learn how my competitors do creator marketing.
METRICS
-
Task Success Rate
-
Time-on-Task
-
Customer Satisfaction Index
DESIGN CHALLENGE
HMW guarantee the SMBs get non-basic info that they really care about?
SOLUTION #3
Trending
Provide analytics and useful insights for SMBs with selected keywords and timeframe at their selected platform.
USER GOAL #4
4a. I can be Party A when selecting my ideal creators.
4b. I can easily understand the creator's info and find the most appropriate creator.
METRICS
-
Task Success Rate
-
Time-on-Task
-
Customer Satisfaction Index
DESIGN CHALLENGE
HMW guarantee the SMBs get successful collaboration with the creators with their low-budget?
SOLUTION #4
-
Only nano- and micro- creators could registered on our site.
-
There is no monthly/yearly subscription fee on our site. Creators' services are affordable in packages.
Decrease service fees:
Pick Creators
-
Push notifications daily for SMBs with creators who would like to collaborate with them(Party A)
-
Provide recommendations in packages based on their specific campaign info in step 1.2(Goals Finder, Audience Mapping)
-
View detailed creator info with analytics and special insights analyzed for them
How I got there
EXPLORATION
1
Clearer navigation bar
Display packages when there are too many options
"I didn't even understand that this was a package page, I thought it was a random arrangement of creators. The title on top of the package was too small, and the left and right buttons on each row were not eye-catching, so I couldn't see it at all..."
- Alex Collins, a board game store owner
#DESIGN DESICIONS
❶ Module Tabs
Created module tabs so that only one module is visible at a time. It's a more effective technique for simplifying the interface.
➋ Cards
-
Reduced the 4-item horizontal slider into 1 single card, which uniformly organized the heterogeneous items.
-
In the initial design, each row would show one type of package, which made the user feel dazzled and confused about the boundary between package and package.
Previous
Now
EXPLORATION
2
Filter: Horizontal bars vs Sidebars
Reorganize and Redesign Creator Info Cards
"Such a big filter makes me feel weird. Then, too many information cards make me dazzled, I already have lost patience because I can't choose or distinguish from so many cards..."
- Jessica Liu, a home-made candle entrepreneur
#DESIGN DESICIONS
❶ & ➋ Facet filters
There is too much information to consider when picking a creator, thereby the filter with facets is most relevant for narrowing the search results based on the domain.
❶ & ➋ Proximity
-
I separated the two filters because the domains in each of them are not associated with each other. In the previous version, they were placed too close to confuse the distinct functions.
-
Also, the huge filter❶ in the previous version occupied half of the page and was neither pleasing nor practical. When users click on the pop-up filter, they will likely feel a sense of instability.
➌ Grid of Equals - More Visual Weight
-
Each card follows a common template in the grid, it's difficult to read because the size of each card is too small. Therefore, I decided more visual weight should be placed on each content item.
-
Besides, I re-distributed the four types of information to the four corners to cut them into more obvious sections. The most important information is in the upper right corner where you could see it at the first glance.
Previous
Now
EXPLORATION
3
Direct users' gaze,
Integrate the previous creator info page with 4 sub-pages into 1 page.
"I don't know where to look when I came to this creator's page, it's like the information was scattered in different places..."
- Jessica Liu, a home-made candle entrepreneur
#DESIGN DESICIONS
❶ Two-Panel Selector → Vertical Stacked Sections on a single page
-
Better hierarchy is shown in the vertically stacked way. In the former design, the users don't know which to look at first when four different sections were scattered in 4 corners. Media content, such as video and images, couldn't be seen clearly as well.
-
More importantly, devices come in different widths, so I can't anticipate what the actual width in pixels will be. Each item section will likely get squeezed a lot to hurt readability.
➋ Two-Panel Media Browser
The users will be able to see the overall previews of the images and videos shown on the left. While the single-item view on the left allows users to focus on the display of the full image and the video.
➌ Consistency
Organized the creator's basic information the way as the previous creator's card did. Also, made the bottom creator's info bigger and clickable.
➍ Titled Sections + Cards
-
Changed the Posting Analysis and Audience Analysis into 2 titled sections.
-
The analytics dashboards were made into a side-by-side display, which is comparable and made the users able to view all the diagrams at a single glance.
Previous
Now
Next Steps
01 Refine Details
Some details were not mentioned in this project, such as how to import data into the platform, how to contact the creators, how to integrate different kinds of information from different social platforms, etc. I believe these aspects need further exploration.
02 Sample Size
Even though I obtained much user feedback from usability testings, a larger sample of users should be tested.
Thanks for making it to the end!
💜
#UX RESEARCH #UX: EHR
Clinical Inbox:
Out-of-Office Functionality
Led the research and MVP design for the Out-of-Office functionality within the clinical inbox of athenaOne, enhancing the awareness and visibility of clinicians' Out-of-Office status across all touchpoints within athenahealth product ecosystem.
