Case Study
Establishing Pomelo for Myanmar
Competitor Analysis • Data Analysis • Personas • Sketching • Prototyping • Stakeholder Collaboration
Establishing the digital presence for a Myanmar-based social business to boost discoverability and sales, to further support the artisan groups around the country supplying their products.
Context
Pomelo is a fair trade shop offering hand-made products developed in collaboration with disadvantaged groups from around Myanmar.
Despite being the top-rated shop in Myanmar on Tripadvisor they still heavily rely upon word-of-mouth. They want a website to improve their digital presence, increase awareness of the business amongst potential customers, and encourage their custom.
Competitor Research
In order to gain a better understanding of the market, I conducted a competitor analysis, using the websites of similar organisations that the client and I had identified as aspirational.
Data Analytics
Analytics provided further insight into how people would interact with our product. This research ensured early-stage designs were well informed.
A key insight was that over half of usage was on mobile devices, browsing behaviour typical for both travellers, and for the local population.
User Personas
We wanted to understand the users and their issues with interacting with Pomelo currently, in order to design to resolve them.
The client and I developed a set of user personas that represented Pomelo’s user base. Their goals and frustrations provided us with insight into what the product needed to be.
Establishing Requirements
Combining the project brief with insights from the competitor research and personas, the following requirements were identified. Building around these requirements will guarantee the product addresses the issues and needs of the users, creating a relevant and useful product.
The user needs to be able to:
• Find the location of the shop quickly and easily
• See products available to buy in-store
• Access contact information without difficulty
• Find more information about Pomelo fair-trade side.
The website needs to be:
• Responsive, for use on mobile devices
• Simple
• Intuitive
Sketching
Sketching initial designs allowed me to rapidly explore different ideas. Combining promising elements from a number of sketches resulted in testable designs to take forward.
Prototyping
I user-tested the interactive mobile prototype made with Marvel, and the desktop paper prototype, to gather feedback and test user-flows before continuing with the designs further.
Development
To minimise the cost and duration of development I built the website using Squarespace. The ability to easily make modifications allows the iterative design process to continue up to and beyond delivery.
Squarespace’s intuitiveness and customer support empower the client to modify and expand the website in the future if desired — stakeholder requirements that we should have formalised earlier in this project
Evaluation and Testing
To identify any remaining usability issues I reviewed the website using Nielsen’s heuristics. It was then sent to a small group of users, selected by the client, for some final user-testing.
After some fine-tuning, the website was launched, being announced through Pomelo’s social media in order to maximise its reach.
Project Delivery
This website provides a platform for potential customers to discover and learn about Pomelo; providing the details to convince them to shop there.
It is fully responsive with a simple, intuitive design built for the majority-tourist customer base using mobile devices on the go, whilst also looking vibrant on larger screens.
Pomelo will be able to track website traffic through Squarespace Analytics to report on the project’s impact. Ultimately success will be more people successfully interacting with Pomelo online, leading to a rise in custom.
