Nourish
Design to improve customer retention
In Fall 2021, I spent four weeks working on a responsive web application design project to improve customer retention with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) services.
Together with three collaborators, we introduced four high-value features to build a more personalized, flexible, supportive farm share service.
The OVERVIEW
Situation
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs provide customers with local, fresh, cheap ingredients but suffer a high customer dropout rate.
Task
I was the UI/UX designer of a student team. I'm in charge of making design decisions to address uncovered customer pain points and improve customer retention.
Action
I adopted a Lean UX mindset, rapidly modeled current states, iteratively prototyped preferred states, and validated proposed solutions through user tests.
Result
I wireframed two critical user flows and helped create four high-value features to address salient pain points in the current farm share customer journey.
our Project Timeline
The Challenge
High Value Proposition, Low Customer Retention
CSA service creates a channel for grocery shoppers to get fresh ingredients, eat healthily, fight food waste and support local farms. Despite being economical, convenient, and sustainable, CSA services have low customer retention.
Popular CSA Service providers
My Role: Drive design with research
As the problem finder: How can I rapidly identify critical frictions and capture pain points in the existing farm share service?
As the problem solver: How can I improve customer experience with CSA farm share service to improve customer retention?
THE Solution
Same service, different experience
I introduced two critical features: the onboarding quiz and the feedback form. These features create a more personalized service that helps customers avoid wasting excess groceries, consequently improving customer retention.
Successful Onboarding
I designed an onboarding quiz that guides users to find the right boxes by answering a series of amusing onboarding questions.
![[Gif] Onboarding Demo](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d207dc51b31b3c368d61ff_%5BGif%5D%20Onboarding%20Demo.gif)
Onboarding Quiz
![[Gif] Feedback Form Demo](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d207daba62a53792569838_%5BGif%5D%20Feedback%20Demo.gif)
Feedback Form
Iterative Personalization
I designed a feedback form that continuously prompts users to tune personalization after each delivery. This feature helps service providers keep up with customers' changing needs.
Continuous Guidance
We introduced recipes & tips tailored based on customers' most recently delivered boxes to educate them on how to deal with unfamiliar ingredients.
![[Gif] Recipe Demo](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d207dbbda4b01d7fdbfc7e_%5BGif%5D%20Recipe%20Demo.gif)
Recipes & Tips
![[Gif] Delivery Update Demo](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d207d9072da027ff4031fb_%5BGif%5D%20Delivery%20Demo.gif)
Delivery Status Notification
Prompt Updates
We designed delivery status updates that set the users at ease by promptly inform them of their farm share box delivery status.
My Approach: Ground decisions in Findings
user stage
Decision
Customers Debate whether to use the service, and decide which plan to use
Delivery
Customers Wait for the farm share box to be delivered
Use
Customers Unpack farm share boxes, store ingredients, Plan, cook, and enjoy groceries
Unsubscribe
Customers decide whether to Continue or stop subscription from the farm share service
Customers feel unsure about what to expect from the box
Customers complain about the lack of system status update
Customers feel guilty about wasting excess groceries
Customers feel frustrated about receiving unfamiliar items
PAIN POINT
underlying NEEDS
OPPORTUNITY
NEW FEATURES
Agency for personalization with little effort
Clarity of what to expect from the service
Guidance on how to approach items in the box
Continual improvement in service quality
Guide customers to get more personalized service
Provide status updates, help customers build clear expectations
Educate customers how to reduce waste through recipes
Create a channel for feedback, iteratively improve service quality
![[Demo] Mobile Onboarding Quiz Page](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d2036002a2a89e3ed01d80_%5BDemo%20Screen%5D%20Onboarding%20Quiz.png)
Onboarding Quiz
![[Demo] Mobile Recipe Page](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d20360a77d74422799eb25_%5BDemo%20Screen%5D%20Recipe.png)
Recipes & Advice
![[Demo] Mobile Delivery Status Page](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d20360f728fa3ea3d5b461_%5BDemo%20Screen%5D%20Delivery%20Status.png)
Delivery Status
![[Demo] Mobile Feedback Form](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d20360aef1307878af7928_%5BDemo%20Screen%5D%20Feedback%20Form.png)
Feedback Form
The Exploration
surface design opportunity through research
To understand the problem space, we tapped into our networks to locate participants and interviewed 7 candidates with prior experience using CSA service.
A snippet from one of our directed storytelling sessions
Directed Storytelling
Throughout my interviews, I adopted directed storytelling to quickly build empathy with participants.
affinity Diagramming
We constructed an affinity diagram to build a collective understanding of customers' shared opinions, where several insights and common themes emerged.
Our affinity diagram
Our customer journey map
Journey Modeling
We depicted pain points from user interviews on a customer journey map to drive design with research findings. I highlighted user actions across different touchpoints and captured the highs and lows of their emotional states throughout the process.
Participant ID
P01
20-25
Age Group
Experience
Previous subscriber for MisFits & CSA Programs
P02
20-25
P03
P04
P05
P06
P07
40-45
20-25
40-45
20-25
25-30
Frequent Farmer’s Market Buyer & Japanese Dessert Box Subscriber
Previously had a farm share service but discontinued and recently signed up again
Current subscriber to Hello Fresh since April 2021, but infrequent user
Current farm share member
Had local CSA twice, each time for 12 weeks
Previous subscriber for Imperfect Foods
My Discovery: Three significant frustrations
Service providers fail to communicate what a farm share box entails, causing customers to feel uncertain about what to expect.
There’s a lack of information regarding delivery status. As a result, customers have little clue about when the box will arrive.
The lack of control during onboarding stage makes customers underprepared for meal planning, and end up throwing away excessive goods or unexpected items.
The Execution
Scaffold a successful onboarding
My most significant contribution to making Nourish a personalized CSA service is designing the onboarding journey.
How can I improve customer experience with CSA farm share service to improve customer retention?
How might I guide customers to waste less and consume more of their farm share through an onboarding journey?
How I Reframed the challenge
Example Mobile Design wireframes
A mobile-first approach:
Speed-up Design process
I adopted a mobile-first approach to avoid distraction from non-essential details, and decided to prototype an onboarding quiz with a twofold intention:
To support actual personalization, I need to effectively collect customers’ dietary needs.
To satisfy perceived personalization, I need to create a pleasing onboarding experience.
One screen, one Task:
Manage users' attention
To simply user interaction with the quiz, I put every screen for one question and one question only. My user test participants enjoyed seeing progress being made with every single action they take.
Feedback from a participant: "I didn’t realize I’d already answered ten questions. That was easy."
Example Quiz Design Wireframes
Iterations of progress indicator design
The progress indicator:
reward users' effort
Visibility of system status is rule #1 on Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics. To inform and reward users, I made a progress indicator to convince users that they are consistently making progress by answering each question.
Feedback from a participant: "It makes me willing to put incremental efforts into answering your questions."
the look & Feel:
Communicate joy visually
Based on five users' feedback on the paper prototypes, I created a consolidated user flow. To keep UI complications under control and empower teammates to contribute to the design cohesively, I created a style guide standardizing color, typography, and grids.
We chose bright yellow and greens to convey an optimistic and friendly tone.
Mulish and Raleway help express a modern, innovative feeling, fit for a tech-oriented farm share brand.
text Snippets from Quiz Design wireframes
the tone & Voice:
Convey delight verbally
In addition to the look and feel, I also improved the tone and voice to create a more coherent experience. Here’s how I defined the voice of Nourish:
- Friendly but not casual
- Cheerful but not funny
- Informative but not dry
The micro-interaction:
Spice up the experience
In addition to content strategy, I believe visual languages also act as an effective part of voice and tone. Hence I introduced delight to the onboarding experience with some micro-interactions.
![[Gif] Bubble Mobile Demo](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d205b6ba62a57479568134_%5BGif%5D%20Bubble%20Mobile%20Demo.gif)
![[Gif] Bubble Desktop Demo](https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6106bbf94c82f231dfb297da/61d205b71faa89becad49ad2_%5BGif%5D%20Bubble%20Desktop%20Demo.gif)
Micro-interaction Snippets from quiz Design wireframes
Iteration from paper prototype to wireframes
A review of my procedure: Explore, Execute, Evaluate
THE Reflection
Look for friction points
A handy UX practice I learned is to diagnose friction points for a user when interacting with a product/service. To find the friction points, I can start with zooming into individual stages in a customer journey map. Then, to figure out means to eliminate friction points, I can zoom back out from the individual stages for a holistic view and then look for opportunities to insert assistance.
To take care or to let go
Though it seems very counter-intuitive, I learned that I could help people by stepping back and getting out of their way. Part of my role as a team member today and team leader in the future is to facilitate the growth of my members. To achieve this, I need to learn how to let others play their performance and develop ideas. Instead of "babysitting" my team members, in the future, I will try to do a better job at setting things up for people to succeed and then sit back.
Though it seems very counter-intuitive, I learned that I could help people by stepping back and getting out of their way.