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TIME FRAME
Research: 1 week
Visual Design: 1 week
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TEAM
Luiza Marciel
Curtis Ross
Vincent Rosier
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ROLE
Research
System Design
Interaction Design
Visual Design
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TOOLS
Figma
Figjam
Useberry
Photoshop
Illustrator
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BRIEF
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04/ INTERACTION DESIGN
BRIEF
Despite the importance of having an online presence for local businesses, many still lack an effective online presence, limited to just a basic landing page. An online presence is just as crucial for a local shop as having a physical location. An e-commerce website can be a great way to boost the visibility and promotion of the shop through search engines, as well as increase sales and revenue by offering services such as delivery or click-and-collect. The objective of this project is to assist local shops and professionals in creating or enhancing their online presence to increase their visibility both on and offline.
INTRODUCTION
In this project, the goal is to create a responsive website for a local business or professional. The main focus will be on presenting information in a clear and organized manner for both customers and stakeholders. The majority of the research phase will be spent on market research and benchmarking. If the local business already has a website, the task will be to analyze what is already in place and enhance the solution.
CHALLENGE
01/ EMPATHIZE
The Skull club Barbershop
Let’s start with some context. Our chosen business is: The Skull Club, a cutting edge contemporary & modern barbers with eye or detail and precision, located in Hertford, United Kingdom.
THE CLIENT
★★★★★
The town has a young population and they tend to be pretty stylish. This makes it an ideal location for a new business such as this. The shop does very well, it has over 200 5 stars reviews on Google and is usually fully booked a week in advance.
But that is not translated to the website of the Skull Club. It has a very homemade feel because, well, it is homemade…
COMPETITION ANALYSIS
We conducted some brand analysis, identifying where the skull club stands in relation to other local barbers. Here we can see our features comparison, brand and market position.
Strengths
- Located in a really trendy small town
- Already has a website
- Reservation possible through the site or directly from google research
- Possible to chose a specific barber
- Video, photos, and possible to have the feeling of the barbershop when going into the site
- 1hour per client = feeling of exclusivity
- Built a strong relationships with his clients( loyalty)
- 5 barber chairs that he rent to “freelance / independents“ Barbers = extra source of income.
Opportunities
- Create an association of concepts (coffee-shop, clothings shop...)
- Articles with ideas / tips to take care of one’s hair
- Improving website, making it primary place for bookings (ditch Booksy)
Weaknesses
- Target public : only men (not against having women, but the environment is really targeting only men - colours, websites, etc etc)
- Branding can send mixed messages
- Website is not as polished (spelling errors and formatting)
- At least 3 and half years old websites ( look and feel a bit dated, not really defined)
Closed 2 days per week (Sunday and Monday)
Highly competitive area for barbers (16 in town)
Threats
TO SUM UP :
The barber’s market is quite standard in terms of visual branding.
All the competitors propose standard services on their website (booking, contact info…)
Their branding positioning is quite different
although barber shops share quite similar branding, The skull club posed the best of the local businesses.
We had the pleasure of meeting Jez, the owner and creator of "The Skull Club". It was fascinating to get to know him more. He shared with us his background as a hairdresser in Camden Town, his desire to own his own business, and how he started. One of his friends encouraged him to participate in a competition where he won an award, which gave him the legitimacy to set up his barbershop, "The Skull Club", in Hertford 3 and a half years ago.
STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEW
As business, what are your values ?
“- They are: making sure customers have quality, comfort, professionalism, consistency, tasty (?) haircuts.”
Can you tell us why Skull Club ? (name & logo)
“- It wasn’t intended to have a link between skull and hair. He likes the design : it’s sharp, edgy, luxurious (black, gold) Phillipe Plein. He got inspiration from a German interior designer (that became later a fashion designer)”
What are you trying to say with your branding ?
“- Luxury, consistent branding (between shop and digital), and a shop that can be globally adapted (you can put it everywhere, from central London to Paris to elsewhere).”
What are your business goals over the next 5–10 years ?
“- Open another shop — Maximise the business while still growing. Hopefully in 5 years, running smooth. Not a location in mind for next shop but north London (quite trendy)
Short term goals: thinking on the next barber; staying for the next quarter, staying stable like it is, nothing specific to change. A year ago they started their own products, so continue selling well..”
What are the main challenges you are facing now ? What do you have in mind in order to treat them ?
“- Thinking about the next barber, difficult to find a decent barber. It is difficult to find someone that is good, and someone who cares as much about his job as the owner..”
The trend of vintage revival on a global scale, along with the increasing mainstream focus on men's self-care and the presence of technology in our daily lives, has thoroughly transformed the barbershop business and customer expectations. We interviewed 4 users, 100 % men, and they fit our target audience between 15–35.
One of them told us this whole business has shifted since he was a kid, when he had to wait for hours for his turn.
“Going to a barbershop is more for a “playful” time than to be practical : he likes the “ritual” of the “vintage” mood, vintage tools…”
“Feeling when on the hairdresser: a little bit of anguish and mixed with pleasure of feeling good and trusting the person that is doing the job”
“I associate barbershops with being neat and tidy. It’s always good to have a chat with your barber. The service satisfaction depends on how good I feel about myself after.”
USER INTERVIEWS
02/ DEFINE
AFFINITY DIAGRAM
We transcribed, translated, and transformed our interviews into an affinity diagram. Sorting into themes and sub themes, then dot voting on what we deemed to be key areas.
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After dot voting, we highlighted 3 key insights : Regularity of visits to the same barber, the satisfaction of buying some Products and the overall Experience of the “me time” of going to a barbershop.
We used everything covered so far to build our persona — Loyal Leo. A loyal customer to his previous barber, he has just moved local to the skull club and is looking for a new barber service to use before a big event. He always wants to look the best and takes pride in his appearance and how others perceive him. His unwillingness to change means he is very nervous about finding a new barber.
PERSONA
Here we see the journey, to skim over the details, we see Leo struggling to find a barber, then he sees the skull club comes highly recommended, then he realises he has to download an app to book — kind of annoying. But he makes it to his appointment, has a great chat and a fantastic haircut. But again he’s slightly let down by having to wait in a queue to pay. His mood picks up again, realising he can buy the products that were used to style his hair. Until he checks the website and realises that, along with no delivery, the website is not great to use.
USER JOURNEY MAP
— Men in Essex that goes regularly to the barbershop need to have a better experience because the web presence of the barbershop doesn’t reflect it’s standards.
— How might we assure the quality standards across all services and products ? How might we improve the booking experience ?How might we expand The Skull Club brand ?
PROBLEM DEFINITION
03/ IDEATION
We took the problem statement and ideated.
Not having time for Crazy 8’s meant we had to condense our process down into “Fudged Up 4s”, this still pushed us to create new ideas for problems.
CRAZY 8
MOSCOW
We took the ideas to one side and used the MOSCOW method to separate them. This process probably took longer than it should have, but we had a LOT of ideas.
- A barber shop website that matches the image of the physical store, and that includes and efficient booking system.
It should also differentiate the 3 main sections of Barber, E-Shop and Charity. Whilst also having a pre-payment and easy check out option
MVP
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
We started from the existing Website map and base on all our research conclusions we started to rearrange sections, add new ones.
We moved then to our happy path, we first brainstormed on a scenario that would showcase the best our new features.
It ended up with 4 tasks:
— book an appointment
— but some hair products
— donate to the charity
— make an online payment
HAPPY PATH
LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAME
Our low fidelity wireframe was tested with 4 users who gave us some really interesting feedbacks. We managed to cluster them into different categories to make sure of what we will have to tackle for the next step of our project.
TESTING & FEEDBACK
MID FIDELITY WIREFRAME
After analysing the feedbacks, we thought of some solutions and we developed our mid-fi.
So, we then uploaded our mid-fi prototype to the tool Useberry to do usability testing. Here are some examples of the Heat maps, statistics and some results. We had in total 10 users that tested our prototype: 8 completed the 4 tasks and 2 dropped off. The results were very very useful so that we understand which pages had to be improved concerning usability in order for us to have the best intuitive interface.
TESTING & FEEDBACK
04/ INTERACTION DESIGN
BRAND DEFINITION
There is not a lot of variety in barber branding in the near competition. But due to the strong theming in The Skull Club and its own identity, we chose to stick with this.
VISUAL KIT
Mood-board
Colour palette
brand attributes
We wanted to stay really Elegant but Approachable, have a strong feeling of Minimalism, some accents British Style, and not forget the Craftsmanship that our stakeholder is really proud of.
We kept the colour palette really simple and clean, an off black, a dark grey, white and accents of soft brass gold.
STYLE GUIDE
KEY FEATURES
BOOKING FLOW
- We created a clearer BOOKING path with simples and distinctive steps:
Pick your BARBER - with a description for each barber
Pick you SERVICE - detailed with every pricing
Pick your DAY
Pick your TIME
SHOPPING FLOW
- The shop has now a dedicated space on the website and has increased the amount of product suggestions by not only selling THE SKULL CLUB line but some AMERICAN CREW products.
CHARITY FLOW
- C A L M , the charity that JEz is supporting, has now a proper page.
A donation can be made directly from the website and added to the cart.
CHECK OUT FLOW
- The check out process now has a login section and a dedicated prof
ile for each customer where you can register some personal information and your bank details.