Enhancing HiFi Bridge's Entry into an Emerging Market with User-Centric Research and Design
THE CLIENT
Meet HiFi Bridge: The Game-Changer in Cryptocurrency
In the ever-evolving landscape of tech startups, HiFi Bridge emerged. This young company embarked on a venture into the realm of cryptocurrency-to-FIAT merchant exchanges, challenging established players in the crypto wallet sector. HiFi's distinctive value centered on the elimination of mandatory customer sign-ups, offering a seamless purchasing experience. Furthermore, they exhibited a commitment to inclusivity by facilitating conversions from a diverse range of cryptocurrencies into the merchant's preferred currency, even accommodating different coin types. Join me on a journey as I delve into how our team helped HiFi Bridge navigate the intricacies of user experience design to realize their innovative vision.
TIMELINE
August - September 2023
(4 weeks)
THE TEAM
Project Manager:
Shivani Patel
Lead UI Design:
Ryan Preske
Lead UI Widget Creation:
Mekayla Lewis
Lead UX Research:
Shannon Austin
PROJECT TYPE
Consulting Partnership
with HIFI Bridge
Cryptocurrency/Finance
OUR CHALLENGES
Essential functional prerequisites and in-depth exploration of an uncharted market.
HIFI’s project presented our team with several intricate challenges, driving us to devise innovative solutions. These challenges, while demanding, underlined the importance of our user-centric methodology:
1. Function Requirements: Balancing an extensive list of requirements, including an unprecedented pay widget, posed a significant challenge in ensuring a seamless user experience. (Add image of functions request list)
2. Empathizing with User Absence in an Emerging Cryptocurrency E-commerce Market: The absence of existing user data and behavior patterns added complexity in understanding user needs due to the project's unique nature. Furthermore, entering the cryptocurrency e-commerce sector meant navigating uncharted territory, including establishing trust and comprehending user behaviors.
3. Explaining UX to Stakeholders: Effectively conveying the UX process' value of meeting user needs, not just aesthetics to less familiar stakeholders required clear, persuasive messaging.
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Despite these challenges, our commitment to a robust product enabled us to confidently tackle uncharted territory, delivering user-centric solutions tailored to the cryptocurrency e-commerce market's unique demands.
THE SOLUTION
Strategically Planning for Future Sprints and Pioneering MVPs for the Inaugural Launch
Our solution encompassed a fully functional responsive merchant portal and a seamlessly integrated pay widget for e-commerce sites, delivering immediate value and laying the foundation for future development:
1. Desktop Merchant
Portal & Pay Widget
We created a user-friendly portal for merchants with essential e-commerce management features and a customizable pay widget to add to their e-commerce page, allowing consumers to quickly and easily pay for their items with alternative methods.
4. Cybersecurity Expertise:
Cybersecurity best practices were implemented to secure the pay widget and portal development from phishing and hacking attacks.
2. Proto-Personas
& Empathy Maps:
We developed proto-personas and empathy maps for investor presentations to align with potential merchant users' needs.
5. Enhanced Accessibility:
Improved accessibility design and auto layouts within the atomic design library (ADS) made the platform more inclusive and streamlined development for quicker, consistent coding, saving HIFI time and money.
3. User Stories
& Acceptance Criteria:
We crafted user stories and clear acceptance criteria to visualize the functions priorities and guide subsequent development phases.
6. Stakeholder Understanding, Investor Engagement:
Stakeholders gained more profound insights into user needs, aiding effective decision-making and future product development, while proto-personas resonated with investors, facilitating funding and support.
While positioning HIFI for future success, our solutions met immediate objectives, enhancing knowledge, accessibility, and stakeholder alignment with our plan for initial and future sprints.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
Discovering Solutions in Similar Markets and Defining Our Acceptance Criteria
We adopted a Agile approach for this sprint to tackle the intricate challenges presented. As lead researcher for this project, my role was to find relevant quantitative and qualitative data to inform us on how we should plan the functions layouts and development. I completed this task by following a three tiered iterative process that would allow me to gather information from multiple areas simultaneously:
01. Empathy
Interviews
Affinity Maps
Proto Personas
Empathy Maps
User Stories
Competitive Analysis
Problem Statement
Prioritization of Functions List
Secondary Research
02. Define
03. Ideation
Site Mapping
User Flows
HMWs (How Might We?)
Acceptable Criteria
MVP(Minimum Viable Product)
Interviews: Stakeholders
Identifying and engaging stakeholders was crucial in shaping our research direction and objectives. We interviewed stakeholders to align our goals, expectations, and gather valuable insights into their ideal market partners. After our interviews, we understood that HIFI’s top priorities were:
01.
Secure Login methods to the HIFI Merchant Portal
02.
Add additional Users to the Merchant Portal with options to limit capabilities
03.
Customizable Pay widget for immediate use on Merchant's e-commerce site
Identifying Hifi's ideal market to be Luxury industries such as Automotive, Real estate, and Hospitality, I took a look at Financial industries in those sectors to find comparable research we could implement in our own project.
Comparative
Market Findings
To find viable research that would be relevant to HIFI's needs, I looked to the financial sector and delved into forums such as Reddit and Discord to survey crypto consumers and stockholders about their frustrations, needs, and behaviors.
To understand the merchant perspective, I interviewed CPAs and industry experts to gain valuable insight on three main topics of interest to HIFI:
01.
Current Security measures for their Company (Quantitative Research)
02.
Software Usage, Needs, and Pain Points (Qualitative Research)
03.
Network and Partnering Decision-Making (Qualitative Research)
SECURITY
According to the National Institute of Science & Technology (NIST) research of Cybersecurity best practices; using a biometric or secure password with a, asymmetric cryptographic authenticator (ex Google Authenticator) reduced phishing/hacking attacks by 90%
SOFTWARE ESSENTIALS
Luxury markets, similar to the merchants HIFI is looking to partner with, need financial software that provides an all-in-one service. Not only generating financial reports for daily/monthly/ annual needs, but also provides data analysis and project planning for the company.
NETWORKING & PARTNERSHIPS
According to our User Interviews most crypto investors are frustrated with having to sign up for additional services like Bitpay or Coinbase just to use their wallets for a single transaction. 80% have conveyed this frustration and are urging merchants to avoid such companies.
C+C Analysis
We comprehensively analyzed companies within our market scope, identifying similarities with and areas of opportunity for HIFI.
According to our Competitive Analysis, most consumers were concerned with having to sign up for additional services like Bitpay or Coinbase just to use their crypto-wallets for a single transaction. 80% of forum users conveyed this frustration and were petitioning merchants to avoid such companies. It was also noted on our competitors pay widgets, that there was a lack of full price breakdown when considering the network fees to transition crypto-to-fiat currency, as well as real time market prices, an area HIFI could leverage and improve the merchant and customer sense of ownership within the crypto market.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
Harnessing Proto-Personas to Create Informed Empathy Maps, Task Flows, and User Stories/Acceptable Criteria
Though our interview pool was limited, we were able to garner enough insights through secondary research to form hypotheses into our ideal target audience.
Proto-personas, lightweight representations of user segments, play a pivotal role in user-centered design by providing initial direction and alignment when comprehensive user research is constrained. While based on assumptions and educated guesses, proto-personas serve as a practical starting point for design discussions and decision-making. They help focus the design process, foster alignment among team members and stakeholders, facilitate early ideation, and encourage hypothesis testing. However, it is essential to validate proto-persona assumptions through research and iterate on them as more user insights become available, ensuring a continuously user-centric approach throughout the project.
The three proto-personas and Empathy Maps we created, allowed us step into the shoes of our users and formulate realistic Task flows and Acceptable Criteria for our User Stories:
​
01.
Angela Sharp -
"The Dragon Decision Maker"
02.
Indira Adams -
"The Ally in Your Corner"
03.
Neal Mistry -
"The Prince Crypto-consumer"
Angela Sharp - The Dragon Decision Maker
Angela Sharp Empathy Map
Add Additional Users to Merchant Account
Angela Sharp - The Dragon Decision Maker
IDEATION
Creating Epics, User Stories, and Acceptable Criteria to break up the Scope of Work into Manageable portions
As we worked on turning HiFi Bridge's innovative idea into a digital reality, we realized how important user stories and acceptance criteria were to organize the functions list in order of importance and workload. We used our proto-personas, empathy maps, and task flows to make sure our navigation system worked seamlessly for users. These design tools helped us prioritize tasks and make strategic choices as we developed wireframes and made relevant adjustments to the Atomic Design System (ADS) in order for the layouts to be responsive and in compliance with accessibility standards.
We knew from the start that this project was in depth, so we divided it into phases. This approach allowed us to prioritize functions based on their necessity for the initial site launch and the level of effort required to develop them. By keeping our focus on the users and being results-driven, we were able to create a pragmatic plan that would meet everyone's needs.
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In sprint one, we put all our energy into Security and the Customer Widget to ensure HiFi had a functional product. The rest of the features? Well, they're on the menu for the next sprint which we laid out in a Gantt Chart.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
LEARNINGS & OPPORTUNITIES
Exploring insights from this project and forging new paths
Through our project's journey, I acquired valuable knowledge and uncovered unforeseen opportunities that could greatly benefit HIFI. Here are some key takeaways and the doors that our design process has opened:
01. Explaining the Significance of UX:
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This project underscored the importance of explaining the design process clearly and concisely to the client. While "UX" is a buzzword in the industry, this project reinforced the crucial role of user experience research in ensuring that we design products correctly and not just aesthetically. Taking time to explain our process to stakeholders ensured that everyone was aligned and understood the rationale behind our decisions.
02. Real-World Client Collaboration:
Working with an actual client provided invaluable lessons in managing expectations, aligning objectives, and delivering results that genuinely address HIFI's unique challenges and goals.
03. Networking and Partnership Opportunities:
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This project opened doors to potential partnerships for HIFI, particularly with preexisting project management software companies. Collaborating with them could enable HIFI to offer an all-in-one service to their merchants, streamlining operations and enhancing user experiences.
04. Usability Testing Strategies:
As HIFI was not yet ready to conduct usability testing, we recommended leveraging software and user forums to identify candidates who closely matched the personas we had developed. This approach ensured that future iterations would be grounded in user perspectives. I developed a User Journey Map to help us visualize the testing results and any iterations we would need to make.
As we move forward, these insights and opportunities will guide our approach to future projects and collaborations. This project has enriched my understanding of user research and positioned me to impact the design and technology landscape significantly.