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Retail Sales Promotions Aggregator
A startup was seeking to rapidly improve its business concept by refining its strategy, web presence and technology.

SKILLS HIGHLIGHT

• Contextual user research
• Rapid prototyping

SITUATION

• Great web-business concept: digitally aggregating Sunday newspaper inserts but needs a better user understanding to refine solutions
• Users could browse Sunday paper "inserts" digitally but value proposition unclear

METHODS

• observed and interviewed target users "deconstructing" their Sunday papers to provide service inspiration
• interviewed company employees to uncover ideas that were not being used (interviewed help desk and development staff)
• created multiple concepts to test with potential users, staff and researchers
• Team included information architect, visual designer, and user researcher

RESULTS

• reorganized solution around consumer’s loyalty around retail brands
• provide solution concepts that allow route planning rather than destination planning
• created concepts that allowed related products to be found
• created scenarios for presentation to executives (proved scenarios through initial interviews with executive team, help desk and actual users)
• argued need to use data from retailers rather than re-keying data