Memento: Product Design
TL,DR
Our client came up with the idea for an eco-friendly e-card celebration platform named Project Green Dragon. We conducted four rounds of user research, which included surveys, competitive audit, usability testing, and desirability testing. Based on our findings, we proposed a new product design called the Memento Box. This design aims to better align the client's business goals with the user experience by offering a more meaningful and personal digital gift option.
Role - Product Designer & UX Research
Methods - Feature cards, IA Diagram, style guide creation, user survey, usability and desirability testing, rapid prototyping, interactive prototyping and stakeholder walkthrough
Team - Emma Broderick, Jonny Fuller, Audrey Geipel
Key Deliverables - Interactive Prototype & Client Research Deck & Annotated Wireframes
The Problem
The e-card industry is highly saturated and often impersonal, with a lack of meaningful impact for the honoree receiving the digital recognition. With many friends and families living in different locations around the globe, it’s often impractical and unsustainable to use posted mail to celebrate loved ones, but the desire to celebrate and honor each other remains a need in the market. Our client Project Green Dragon came to us with the desire to mark life’s milestones in a more personal and sustainable manner through digital cards and eco-conscious gift giving.
In our modern digital world, how might we personalize and enhance the experience of both giving and receiving digital cards and gifts?
The Solution
Through extensive user research, our team found that 83% of participants from intended user groups do not use or enjoy digital cards because they feel “impersonal” and are lacking in “meaningful effort.” Our team reconceptualized the idea of e-cards into a digital Memento Box. Through a collaborative, sustainable, and customizable digital Memento Box, users will be able to create unique, personal, and impactful digital celebration experiences for their loved ones.
“I am blown away! I love this idea, it’s so innovative. It would be so special to receive something like this!” - Participant E
The PROCESS
Making a Pivot from the Start
After conducting a stakeholder interview and competitive audit, it was clear that the e-card market was saturated, and e-cards don’t fully address our clients’ goal of a unique and collaborative tool that could be used to mark life milestones in a personal and sustainable way. The competition includes large brands like Hallmark, and American Greetings, who dominate the digital card industry and already offer a wide variety of templates. With the agreement of our client, our team decided to differentiate from digital cards with an entirely new format and product to then be tested on users.
Gaining Insight from Users
We needed to better understand our users, how they want to give and receive in celebratory moments, what’s meaningful to them, and why. The two main user groups, defined by our client, are parents, and young working professionals. With such a wide breadth of users who may use this product, our team decided to utilize a user survey on a larger participant group in order to gain the most comprehensive insights on our users desires and needs. The survey included feature ideas to be ranked, and generative questions to understand participants personal experiences and pain points when trying to celebrate life milestones.
Desirability Testing of Product Concepts
The initial rounds of research inspired low-fidelity wireframes to be tested further. In 6 participant interviews we walked through options of what the product could become. We received their qualitative feedback: they explained rationale for what they liked best, and this feedback guided key decisions for the prototype going forward.
Identifying Pain Points
In our final round of research we identified three remaining pain points in the prototype found through usability testing.
1.) Inviting Collaborators - Added clarity around inviting collaborators in the setup form. All users were confused about how many collaborators they could invite.
2.) Finding active boxes - All users went to the drop down menu for this task, so we made it easier to find active boxes when returning to the site, by creating a “my boxes” page in the dropdown menu, and a dedicated page for active and past boxes.
3.)Admin Overview & Preview Page - Due to user feedback, we restructured the admin overview page so all the features are visible without a false bottom, and reduced the number of tabs in the editing view by combining the original preview and send page onto the admin dashboard.
KEY FINDINGS
Quantitative
When asked to rank different ways to receive cards the handwritten notes ranked 1st or 2nd place for every participant, and the traditional card and ecard ranked 3rd or 4th.The sentiment behind someone taking the time to write something out by hand still holds the most meaning to users.
Participants were also asked to consider a list of possible features and respond with how important they considered them. When prioritized by importance, it is clear that AI Registry and Background Music were by far the least important or desirable features. With collaboration tools, question prompts and gift boxes being most desirable.
83% of users don’t use or like digital cards because they aren’t personal.
Users most enjoyed receiving handwritten notes from friends and family over both ecards and traditional store-bought cards.
Qualitative
Users overwhelmingly report that getting to witness the reactions and impact their. planning/effort has on the person being celebrated is the most rewarding thing to them.
A secondary reward is getting affirmation from others who witness the efforts they put in.
Collaboration is an important part of planning celebrations.
Product Concepts
Users like the product box that was most customizable.
Users disliked the editing page that required them to do much layout design on their own
User disliked autoplaying a custom video, because they felt they could do that themselves.
Users were presented with two examples from the competition for how a group gift could be executed. A shared cart or a group gift basket. All users preferred the shared cart as gift baskes were associated with corporate and impersonal gifts.
The Prototype
Interactive Prototype
Design Rationale
1.) Celebratory & clean aesthetic created visual hierarchy, flow, and differentiates from competitors -
Our client wanted a sleek and clean aesthetic, which differentiates digital competitors. We created a style guide that provided consistency in font, voice, tone, and color throughout the website. To accomplish the goal of the website being both clean, collaborative, and celebratory, our team used two main pops of color that matched the boxed logo and box bows, on the backdrop of open white space, and we used a conversational tone.
2.) Informative and cheerful video is the hero of the homepage -
Because this is an entirely new product, we felt it would be important to have an intro video right on the homepage, along with examples of different memento boxes so the user can easily understand and visualize what they are purchasing. User research indicated the desire for a highly unique, personal, and memorable product to inspire efforts of collaborators in making the gift. Therefore, it was crucial to quickly inspire and inform users.
3.) Highly ranked editing page layout with attention grabbing color -
In comparison to other editing page wireframes, the user research indicated this layout style was the most intuitive and desirable. All sections are separated and highlighted in red to draw attention. Buttons remain consistent: yellow indicates marketing buttons, black indicates the primary button, and red is used for areas that need to grab the users’ attention. During usability testing, editing pages were found to be clear, exciting, and easy to understand.
4.) Highlighted collaboration tools as requested by users -
We streamlined collaboration by establishing one host, who has the ability to add, delete and re-enter as many collaborators as they paid for in box size. All collaborators are able to add assets to the digital gift box independently. Helpful reminders can be scheduled to send out to collaborators without the host having to remember to contact contributors individually. The admin overview keeps track of all that has been contributed, and all dates. Lastly, we found in our user research there is a desire for a safeguard before the digital gift box is auto-sent. In the current version of the prototype the host is auto-reminded to review the box before it can be delivered.
5.) Collaborative eco-conscious gift giving -
To address the client's goal of making this digital product more eco-friendly, and to address the user pain point of collaborative gift giving, we created the option for a shared gift cart in each memento box. All collaborators have access to the same shopping cart, ensuring everyone who wants to participate can send a gift and avoid repeat gifts. By shipping one large shared gift box, at the same time, and reducing the need for returned items due to duplicate gifts, we aimed to improve the eco-friendly nature of shipping celebratory gifts, in both a cohesive and collaborative way.
6.) Giving thanks as the recipient -
Our generative research found that being able to receive affirmation and see the reaction of the honoree of a celebration was highly rewarding. On the recipient page we created visual hierarchy to draw attention to the ability of recipients to send thank you. To provide flexibility, and customization for senders we prototyped a voice note and written thank you options, with the ability to select the group or individuals while sending personal or group thanks.
ConClusion & NexT steps
In conclusion, the Memento Box was developed based on user feedback, desirability, and usability insights throughout four rounds of research. The product was found to be highly desirable by all participants. The decisions made about each design element of this prototype were informed by user research and design principles. For the scope of this project, we created an MVP and noted user feedback on what would be most helpful for next steps:
Users want more customization options for the boxes. This could include making them themed to different occasions, or just adding more colors and bows.
All of our users mentioned that they wondered who could see the contents of the box - if they wanted to upload a very personal note, would everyone be able to read it? Allowing users the ability to select between “visible to all” or “visible to only me and the host” when uploading to the box would allow for them to make their own choices about privacy settings.
As of now, once the user has locked in on the size of their box and paid for it, there’s no way to change it. An important additional feature would be adding the ability to add storage to the box on the editing page, in case their project grows beyond the size they expected.
