In March 2021, nearing the end of my BrainStation education I was privileged enough to be part of a team of cross discipline students that tackled a 24 hour hackathon. BrainStation's industry partner Shopify tasked me, one other UX Designer, two Web Developers and two Data Scientists with coming up with a digital solution for a unique problem space.
The Challenge
Over an intensive period of brainstorming, discussion and iteration with check-ins from the BrainStation educators, our team was tasked with creating a digital solution designed to help Shopify lower the barriers to entrepreneurship in entirely new regions, demographics and business sectors.
Role
Role: UX/UI Designer (1 of 2)
Timeline: 24 hours
Platform: Desktop Web Browser
Approach
Secondary research w/ Data Science Team
Whiteboarding & Ideation
Storyboarding
User Flow
UI Deconstruction
UI Guide for Web Developers
High Fidelity Development
Prototyping
Hand Off to Web Developers
Slide Deck Presentation
Problem Space
In 24 hours our multidisciplinary team brainstormed, discussed and iterated a solution to help Shopify utilize its ecosystem in order to lower the barrier to entrepreneurship in entirely new regions, demographics and business sectors.
Research
Through the collection of secondary research we found that collaborations help businesses by...
1. Increasing revenue
2. Increasing market shares
3. Increasing operational efficiency
These findings allowed our team to choose a focus and begin tackling the problem space.
How Might We...
Proto Persona
After synthesizing our findings and creating a HMW statement, our proto persona came to life.
Meet Daniel Alvarez...
His pain points include...
Not being able to connect with similar businesses due to a lack of communication.
His clientele seem to be coming from one region, creating a bottleneck in terms of global expansion of his brand.
Ideation
The creation of Daniel Alvarez allowed myself and the other UX Designer to find our "north star" using an experience map, which in turn jump started the ideation process. Our team, Collab Lab was to create a solution, which connected like-minded business owners looking to collaborate with other vendors in order to create a more global brand and help Shopify enter new regions, demographics and business sectors.
The process began with sketching, then we created low-fidelity wireframes and finally we created the final high-fidelity wireframes and prototype to hand off to the web developers.
Prototype
Please view the prototype and follow the task flow as Daniel Alvarez looking to collaborate with Prints By Akira and seeing the potential benefits this partnership can offer his current Shopify marketplace.
Please note: Daniel is interested in sparking a conversation with the store owner.
Next Steps & Key Learnings
As a UX Designer working in a cross disciplinary project I was able to understand what it will be like as a UX Designer in the real world. This exercise took us out of our comfort zone and forced us to rapidly think and create.
I learned how to...
manage my time efficiently, while simultaneously managing the expectations of others.
The importance of a data science team assisting in the research and ideation phase.
And lastly, how to maintain web devs informed throughout the whole project in order to maintain realistic expectations of what can be achieved.
If this idea was approved for further development, the next steps would include...
Creating more accurate data, which would allow the user to see other potential benefits of collaborating with a certain store.
Using Shopify's vendor and consumer demographics data to tailor recommendations.
Designing more screens, in which the users can see different means of collaborations and choose the one that works best for their stores.
