Main user experience problems
Overall pain is = Painfulness + Frequency.
The top 3 reported problems with the highest overall painfulness:
1. It’s hard to know what type of experience you will get from a strain because the descriptions are not consistent or lack detail. This makes the selection process more difficult and risky.
Overall Painfulness: (5/8). Frustrating(2) + Often(3)
2. As a new user it is difficult to understand how to use the product or consume based on the form(edible, vape, flower). Additionally, what is the recommended dosage for a new user and what is the median dosage for a regular user?
Overall Painfulness (5/8). Agonizing(3) + Sometimes(2)
3. The user interface is cluttered, busy, and confusing. Too many products and options displayed is distracting and sometimes overwhelming.
Overall Painfulness (4/8). Annoying(1) + Often(3)
Lastly, regarding the use cases for consuming, all the responses fell into the categories of casual/recreational, sleep, or creativity. In addition, to our own online research, recovery via CBD was also a very popular use case.
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Situation and Approach
Knowing there would be a dual user flow occurring on the same page for different personas (experienced consumer, new consumer), I thought it would be a good idea to place the interactions corresponding to each persona near each other. It would be comprised of an input bar for specific searches and a row of buttons underneath it for each use case. Boom, solved….well not quite.
Problem
After implementing this aforementioned approach, the landing page looked and felt more like a google search with some filters rather than a tailored user experience. Why? Because the introductory use cases for beginners were not front and center, but below the search bar as regular buttons. From a hierarchical perspective core beginner entry points seemed secondary. This seemed like a safe and balanced approach, but 3 of the 5 testers did not click the use cases or use the search bar and instead went to the top nav to navigate to the product screen, which is not the ideal path. When asked why the didn't use those options, they said something along the lines of wanting to explore the products and not search for any, which was frustrating to hear that this initial approach did not work for them.
Adaptation
I took a “less professional” and riskier approach and placed the genie in the middle with large buttons which are seen in the screenshots in this case study. I also moved the search bar high up the page by itself. This way the uses cases would be impossible to miss and the genie logo would emphasize that the priority of these use cases. Though this seems like a less standard approach I reminded the founders that the previous usability testing was not a success for new consumers, which made them more open to this genie and use case centered approach.
Result
All users both experienced(2) and new consumers(3) navigated via the genie options. This behavior resulted in being more favorable in the eyes of the founders because it means experienced users were intrigued enough to explore the shop as opposed to typing in a product or strain they wanted and going right to it while not seeing what other products were offered. This was not the testers' first time navigating the prototype, so I was expecting the experienced users to use the search bar. Interestingly enough, a positive unintended outcome emerged in that this new approach resulted in higher and longer amounts of product exploration.
