Mental Models
THE Opportunity
What I found
Business Problem
Earlier in 2023 Smart Spaces stakeholders noticed that units per order (basket size), average order value and service attachment rate were all lower than expected across Smart Spaces online which resulted in loss of potential revenue and targets for the company.
During a presentation to stakeholders on a potential solution I was asked to pivot and create another type of product. However, I explained that this new product didn’t align with our initial mental model assumption and I suggested we conduct some user research so that we could make a more informed decision on what product to prioritise next. The stakeholders agreed on this approach and so I reached out to the research team who helped me with next steps.
THE APPROACH
How I fixed it
Hypothesis
We hypothesised that customers:
1. Know what they want and how much they want to spend before they arrive on our website.
2. Can be upsold on the website via incentives (would be good to understand what is seen as incentivising to customers and if installation could be one of these).
3. Might not find our current collections relevant to their specific needs or see the value in adding them.
4. Feel like installation is expensive but could be useful when adding multiple wired devices.
Measures of Success
Although a bit different, the measure of success of this project would be if stakeholders accepted the research findings we presented and decide to prioritise the project we were already working on.
STEP 1
Customer Interviews
We discussed research methods for uncovering mental models surrounding the purchase of multiple smart products and installation and to uncover customer expectations, needs and pain points when using the existing Smart Spaces website.
It was concluded that the best method would be to conduct customer interviews and so I began by completing a user research canvas including a discussion guide.
After discussing the screener with the researcher 6 participants were recruited. We then conducted the 6 x 60 minute interviews with current Optus customers who were interested in purchasing smart devices.
STEP 2
Customer Surveys
Next we engaged the market research team to discuss quantitative market research and set out to validate our qualitative findings by conducting a survey with 575 respondents.
STEP 3
Affinity Clusters
The researcher and I met to create themes and affinity clusters and validated our assumptions with some interesting insights.
STEP 4
Presentation
We presented the findings to our peers and stakeholders with a list of our recommended priorities to maximise our demand generation strategy for the next quarter.
THE SOLUTION
What I did
The stakeholders agreed to allow us to continue work on our project we went about prioritising the projects for the next quarter.
Fortunately thanks to the research conducted which revealed a customer pain point which needed immediate attention we reprioritised the first project to be the homepage redesign followed by the project we were already working on and then finally the one the stakeholders had suggested.
THE CHALLENGES
What I learned
After the project I reflected on the following insights:
- The first challenge was during recruitment when the researcher I was working with advised me that we only had one male participant who fitted our recruitment specifications. A lesson from previous user testing sessions taught me that it was important for us to get a balanced participation split between genders and so I requested we update the specs to allow for more men to apply. Making this change provided us with important insights and it was good we made it.
- The second challenge I faced was obtaining insights from our participants which were relevant as quite a few of them tended to waffle and go off topic. I also had a suspicion that one or two may have bent the truth in order to be recruited.
- Lastly I learned that if required I can use customer research to validate my hypothesis which may enable stakeholders to see a different point of view.