Client: A Finance Company
Team: 4 UX Designers
Duration: 2 months
Role: Conducting ethnographic study by visiting the APMC yard, Bangalore and documenting the findings.
Problem Statement
To understand the working in APMC yard and tailor the product the the needs of the users in the yard.
To understand why the users are not using Product X
Process
Four UX Designers went to the APMC Yard, Yeshwantpur, Bangalore to understand the process. Every individual designer was designated to a particular shop. I was shadowing the user and observing them in their natural settings. In cases of doubt without disturbing them would ask few questions to understand their interactions and interests.
Totally we visited around 30 customers, but the data shown here is based on the visits I have done. I had visited 7 customers and below is the documentation of the same.
Environmental Scenes
Most of the shops had similar set-up. They had a black-board to update the stock items. A desktop computer for data entry, CCTV cameras, attached godowns, note counting machines, printer, lots of files and folders with stationery, calculator, cheque book, landline phone etc.,
Activity Observation Chart
The experiment was conducted at their natural setting. I was there when they opened the shop till they closed it. It was conducted weekly once. After the visit, the observations were documented in the office database.
Whenever encountered with doubt, appropriate questions were asked to the users without disturbing their daily works.
The observations and user interviews helped me to understand different activities carried out in the yard and also the pain-points they used to encountered while doing their work.
Rainbow Map
All the pain-points participants encountered were considered and it was mapped alongside which participant encountered which problem. Every participant is given a colour code. The row which has all the colours gives us an insight that it is the problem faced by majority of them.
Customer Journey Map
A persona was considered based on the similarities observed and the common pain-points were used to define his story. A customer journey map was illustrated to understand a day in his life along with his emotions (as observed). Some of the quotes of the user is being used wherever apt. This would be an efficient means to communicate to the stakeholders.
Conclusion
Challenges
- Most of the people in yard were not welcoming and were not co-operating for the research
- Some shops were busy and they did not have time accommodate us
- Some people were not open about the problems they were facing
- Documenting the findings and sharing to stakeholders
Learnings
- Communicating effectively the purpose or the objective of the research
- To conduct research in any given environment
- Documenting the research findings using different methods - Initially individual findings were documented in AEIOU model
- Amalgamation of the entire research using the above methods
- Other research methods and user testing needs to be conducted to gain further insights
Next Project
Closet - An Automated Wardrobe
This project deals with automation of wardrobe, the doors and the movement of hangers with clothes. Ardinos, sensors were used to prototype this system along with developing a mobile app.
