Project Brief

In November 2020, the Association of Haitian Professionals (AHP) created Mango Lakay, an online directory of Haitian vendors to promote economic prosperity, entrepreneurial spirit, and connection within the Haitian community. However, over an 11-month period, Mango Lakay did not see consistent growth and failed to acquire new vendor partnerships.

This project aimed to identify and understand the current experiences and obstacles of the stakeholders (i.e., vendors, Mango Lakay team). With these findings, we created conceptual models and design prototypes to improve the vendor experience and incentivize growth on the platform.

Process

We designed a plan for data collection and analysis based on the Contextual Design method. We conducted virtual interviews with vendors and Mango Lakay members and analyzed the data during interpretation sessions. Taking our interpretation session notes from each individual interview, we used inductive reasoning to create an Affinity Diagram to see common patterns and structure without losing individual variation.

We consolidated the data into Contextual Design models (i.e., identity model, persona, and journey map) to represent the structure, behavior, and experiences of user activities in a tangible way.

My Role

I worked within a team of 5 other researchers and designers throughout this project. My primary roles was as an Analyst and was responsible for creating our interview protocol, conducting some of ther interviews, and synthesizing the qualitative data collected through interviews and interpretation sessions into Affinity Diagrams. Additionally, I collaborated in the creation of conceptual models as well as the client presentation.

Research

Data Synthesis

In order to synthensize and analyse all the qualitative data that was collected through interviews, we decided to follow the process of affinity mapping - a bottom up approach of organizing key details from interviews into structured categoies that reflect the common patterns expressed and experienced by users.

Readable version can be found here.

The affinity process revealed 4 key high-level findings that we emerged as patterns from the interviews. These findings reflected both the positive aspects of Mango Lakay's current platform as well as the pain points, and the common issues raised by vendors.

At the end of our Affinity Diagram process, we began working towards creating contextual models to represent our findings. Since we found common shared goals amongst vendors and Mango Lakay - we chose to identify the most common identities that represented a vendor on Mango Lakay. Then, we created a persona of a ficticious Mango Lakay vendor based on our findings. Finally, we created a journey map to represent the journey of this fictional vendor to identify low and high points in the journey

Identity Model

We created an Identity Model to reflect the data points relevant to vendor identity. It conveys key elements about the sources of pride, self-esteem, and value through the lens with respect to the product objectives.

Readable version can be found here.

Persona

This model helped us understand what a typical vendor for Mango Lakay would be. It is a fictional representation of real-world data that we have collected as well as an amalgmation of different identities represented in the identity model.

Readable version can be found here.

Journey Map

This is a step-by-step model showing what the user does at every part of the process and how they are emotionally feeling along the way. At the end of the model, we provide opportunities that are derived from the pain points the user experiences

Readable version can be found here.

High Level Findings

Through our data collection and analysis, we found three key principles that were existing pain points for Mango Lakay. We decided to use these as the basis for our ideation process.

Hot Ideas & Visioning

How might we give vendors control to have direct communication and engagement with customers on the Mango Lakay online platform?

Once we had our key findings, we used these collectively as a team to brainstorm solutions to improve the Mango Lakay platofrm.

Keeping in mind constraints (cost, time, ease of development), we felt that the best value for investment, and the most effective solution was to creat a subscription feed for vendors and customers.

Subscription Feed

A way to encourage natural community interaction and organic growth. By implementing a subscription feed that allows vendors to push alerts, promotions, and events to customer subscribers, Mango Lakay will further bolster the feeling of community connection on the site. This will encourage customers to return to and interact with their favorite vendors thus leading to an increase in traffic on the vendor’s own website.

Additional Artifacts