MY ROLE
This was my first project in Australia and I was supported by the Creative Director throughout the experience as I worked through the UX deliverables. I was responsible for the contextual inquires in Asia as well as facilitating workshops and working session - with support in key meetings. After the initial Discovery phase that focused on personas and customer journeys, I also created all the wireframes and annotations, with close collaboration with the designer and ran weekly feedback sessions with the client.
THE CHALLENGE
CREATE AN E-COMMERCE EXPERIENCE THAT TRULY EXPRESSES WHO WE ARE
Comvita came to us looking to define the future-state customer experience for their global web presence, covering both brand experience and e-commerce across their 5 key markets: Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, South Korea and the UK.
Being founded in beautiful and wild New Zealand, it was important for Comvita to bring alive the country's spirit and hero the pure and natural ingredients that their products are made of.
Apart from articulating this spirit to the rest of the world and uplifting the customer experience, Comvita were also looking for help in forming key business and functional requirements, provide technical recommendations and drive alignment and excitement across Comvita’s global stakeholders for the redesign.
My travel plan and schedule of interviews - it was a truly focused set of weeks, but such and amazing opportunity and I'm forever grateful for the experience.
THE APPROACH
TRULY UNDERSTAND MARKET NEEDS
TRULY UNDERSTAND MARKET NEEDS
To best uncover true customer needs and what people were looking for when visiting the website, we conducted a series of contextual inquiries across all key markets. I was fortunate enough to be asked to conduct this research in the Asian markets and shortly after the project kick-off I found myself traveling around Asia, using translators to conduct my research and talking to Comvita customers - forming up a better understanding of how we could reinvent and push the Comvita experience forward.
I think the most unique experience I’ve ever had as a UX designer was sitting on the floor in an apartment in Tokyo, Japan, drinking tea and talking to a mother (through a translator) about her beauty and health routines while her young child was running around wild in their living room. Truly and amazing experience that will stay with me forever!
I also visited Comvita stores and store-in-stores while I was traveling in Asia.
UX DELIVERABLES - A SNAPSHOT
Based on the interviews, as well as interviews conducted by my colleagues in Australia and the UK, we crafted a set of personas and visualised what the future experience might look like through a set of customer journeys.
To take the stakeholders on the journey and build excitement and alignment across the team, we provided an overview of the customer we've spoken to and used behavioural mapping to draw out what these participants all had in common. Based on this we formed overarching themes and tensions that we then mapped needs, goals and behaviours against.
Comvita customers across 4 of the 5 key markets.
Due to the quick turnarounds the Hong Kong interviews served as validations post workshops rather than as input for the working sessions with the client.
Behavioural mapping uncovering key needs, goals and behaviours and formed a foundation for our Persona drafts that we workshopped with the client.
After we'd workshopped our findings and aligned key stakeholders, we crafted 4 personas and a set of key customer journeys for each persona.
Client workshop in New Zealand.
Customer journey sample
After the initial discovery phase we went into delivery mode and created wireframes, designs and annotations for the implementation. A key consideration with this project was the multi-lingual requirements and we needed to make sure that our solutions was flexible enough to accommodate all markets and their different needs.
THE IMPACT
STORYTELLING E-COMMERCE
STORYTELLING E-COMMERCE
Because Comvita isn't just another health and beauty company - they're truly passionate and committed to the guardianship of the land and the purity of their natural ingredients - we couldn't just build another standard e-commerce solution.
The website and it's layout is built to hero these natural ingredients, the beauty of the land and the story behind Comvita, but we went a step further and created a set of videos with natural spots across the website to bring the purity of New Zealand a little bit closer to the rest of us.
