Research Findings
We conducted semi-structured interviews in a few local record shops with four participants, two store employees and two customers. By choosing to interview both customers and employees we were able to broadly explore the pain points and frustrations of both user groups. We also conducted a contextual inquiry with one shop employee.
Through our interviews and contextual inquiry we found that employees:
​
-
Value the classic, nostalgic atmosphere of a record shop
-
Want a balance between technology and the traditional record shop experience
-
Struggle to keep track of inventory
-
Invest a lot of time in researching appropriate record prices
-
Are passionate about connecting customers with great music
-
Have diverse inventory strategies, ranging from excel sheets to handwritten records
We found that customers:
​
-
Enjoy the browsing experience of records shops and the feeling of discovering new music
-
Struggle to navigate different organization systems across different shops
-
Tend to compare prices at different stores when looking for a particular record
Personas
From what we learned in our user research, we identified and compiled common pain points, goals, and desires, leveraging this information to create two persona profiles of potential users. At this point we still had not narrowed our project scope, so we made one employee and one customer persona. We wanted these personas to be realistic, basing them off of our research and avoiding assumptions whenever possible, to assure that they would represent our users.
Throughout the rest of the design process we used these personas to remind us who we were designing for and how our product might alleviate their pain points and help them achieve their goals.
User journey map
In creating the user journey map, we decided to focus our project on creating solution for the record shop employee. We brainstormed touch-points that our user might encounter throughout the day and mapped these to the user’s emotions. A few of our interviewees mentioned that it can be difficult to keep up with cataloging and adding records to inventory when the store becomes busy. This is incorporated into the user journey map when Bill’s (our employee persona) happiness level drops as he becomes overwhelmed with a busy store.
Design Requirements
To stay focused on our design problem, we wrote five key design requirements that our solution would need to address. We wanted to create a solution that helped employees:
-
Allows users to add records to their store’s collection
-
Provides multiple profiles for admin and employees
-
Allows users to keep track of customers’ desired records
-
Maintains nostalgic experience by using classic color schemes
-
Assists organization through filtering and sorting records