Official Black App
An app with the mission to put every black owned business on the global market to help prolong the life of the black dollar in the community.
Overview
Official Black App is an entrepreneurial app that connects consumers to local black-owned businesses. Their mission is to support black-owned businesses and business owners across the US. They emphasis community involvement and minority owned companies.
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During this project, I worked with three other team members to conduct research, create a design system, and redesign the iOS app.
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The Problem
The Small Business Owner needs a platform that provides value to their business so they can easily promote their products and services to customers. The app doesn't currently have a streamlined way to do that and services are not featured in an organized way. They were able to choose their own category tag when creating their page, so there is no consistency in the naming conventions. My group and I re-imagined the landing page by showing images and more succinct categories to make it more intuitive for users to find businesses. We also implemented a blog feature, which added to the value of the business owner subscription, where they could post and browse articles relevant to entrepreneurship.
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The consumer is a small business enthusiast that doesn't know where to look, but needs to find quality products from local small businesses so they can support their community. Previously, there was not a way for them to connect on the platform. My team and I added a community forum where people can ask for recommendations for businesses in their area or the area they are visiting.
Goals
Discover user pain points to create new features and update existing user flow to generate more site traffic. Users want to purchase from small businesses that have high value products and services, and also need to be able to find them easily. During this process they want to feel connected to their community and that products are customizable.
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Business owners want to maximize the value of their subscription by being able to contribute to and promote their business. From the stakeholder perspective, they are primarily concerned with promoting black entrepreneurship by prolonging the life of the black dollar. This can be achieved by attracting new customers to the app and retaining existing customers.
Role:
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UX Researcher
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Participant in Wireframing and Prototyping
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Head of Client Communication and Project Management
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Tools:
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Figma
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Figjam
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Useberry
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Maze
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Zoom
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Duration:
​5 Weeks
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Design Process
1) Discover: Sent out Google Form Survey to uncover who preferred to shop small business and/or if they were an owner. Next, I reached out to participants who indicated they would be willing to do an interview, which were conducted over Zoom using Question & Usability Test Current State Guide. Results were synthesized on an Affinity Map where we formulated Problem Statements from the perspective of the Consumer and of the Small Business Owner. We conducted a second Usability Test through Maze for the Wire Frame. We conducted a third and final Usability Test through Useberry using the High Fidelity Prototype. Feedback from this test was iterated in to the final design.
2) Design:
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Added community led forum, blog with entrepreneur education, and reviews
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Re-branded Logo
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Consolidated business categories in a carousel format and made it image forward
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Added map feature that shows local businesses
3) Develop: Conducted Design Studio to sketch in FigJam, Conducted Usability Testing in Maze for current app, used Figma to create Low Fidelity and High Fidelity Prototypes which were both tested on UseBerry.
4) Deliver: Present Canva slide deck to highlight design process and provided links to detailed Research Report and artifacts.
Research
Competitive/Comparative Analysis
To gather insight in to what companies in this niche market were doing to be successful in attracting and retaining customers, my team and I completed an analysis of relevant competitors. We also completed comparative analysis in order to get inspiration from platforms that were excelling in allowing users to locate businesses and leave or read reviews.
User Flows
Personas
Research Participants
Key Findings
Initial Sketches
Heuristic Evaluation
An evaluation was completed in order to the analyze the existing user flow and how the process and feedback given to users when going through tasks on the app could be improved.
Original Interface
The original UI of the app was overwhelming with the number of categories users had to choose from upon logging in for the first time and the Call to Action was not immediately apparent. After completing an analysis of the app, I wanted to validate our assumptions with research that the user would benefit from a more image forward and more succinctly organized landing screen.
Wireframes
Find a Business
Community Forum
Create a Business Blog Post
Design System
We decided to re-design the interface of the application due to feedback from users. We intentionally chose our color palette in order to parallel the mission of the organization which emphasizes community and supporting minority owned businesses.
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Purple symbolizes ambition, wealth, creativity, pride, and independence, while pink symbolizes friendship, community, care, and compassion.
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Next Steps
1. App Walkthrough
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An educational component for first-time OBA app users to allow users more knowledge on how to function through the app.
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2. Option to list a business
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Implementing the option for business owners to list their own businesses so they can be found within the app and eventually on the platform.
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3. Implement an in-app shopping experience
Businesses will be able to sell their product, or voucher for their service, through an in-app shopping experience where consumers can shop from any distance (within applicable parameters of the seller).
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4. Card Sort
Improve the information architecture by creating more succinct categories to keep the users from being overwhelmed.
Reflections
There were several ideas our team started with that we ended up not using including a rating feature for stores and promoting newly listed local business on the home page. In addition, from the business sign up perspective, on the store's subscription page, there would be certain information required. For prioritization and scope, we decided to not focus on the onboarding process of listing a business as we believed that to be secondary and chose to focus instead on instead the consumer side.
Challenges we overcame during this Design sprint included staying flexible, understanding the "why" behind actions, and remembering to not rush the research phase. With such a niche market, finding qualified research participants was an obstacle. We also wanted to ensure interviews were as unbiased as possible if they had already had previous exposure to the app. By conducting the original Usability Test proctored, we were able to glean a lot of additional insight on the motivations and frustrations behind the user flow compared to having a participant complete it independently.
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Our largest hurdle was that after the initial Kick Off Meeting, the client was non responsive to our emails and requests for meetings. We also did not receive back-end access to be able to further analyze the business listing side of the app. Because of this, we had to pivot to prioritize the consumer side of the app that was grounded in user research. By continually keeping prioritization at the top of our minds, we were still able to work through the decision process progressively and efficiently to validate our assumptions.
I have detailed this experience further in the Medium article linked here.