Lauizm | Trueform iOS App Case Study

This ambitious start up wanted to solve this b2c problem: How do we allow customers to discover online goods across retail locations in North America?

The original design of the iOS app was completed and developed before my 2017 interview process. The CEO at the time hired a previous designer to create the brand and iOS app.

The initial design was rudimentary and didn’t meet the business objections and goals it desired. Resulting in a dull, drab, and ineffective way of learning about retail goods while placed at our locations.

This project faced the same challenges as the True Analytics Portal – it lacked user research, usability testing, and low-fi prototyping, and begged for design thinking. Fortunately, it was still the beginning stages of the startup. I said yes to this exciting opportunity.

Our Goal

Original – Exhibit transparent product information to retail consumers and obtain data analytics to feed into True Analytics, for brand makers to review the sales funnel of their products.
Current – Continue to showcase transparent product information to retail consumers that help with sales conversions.

Our Hypothesis

Original – Trueform iOS App digitized the retail shopping experience through a self-serving experience allowing the customer to discover the retail goods we sold, experiencing it, and deciding whether to purchase it.
Current – Continue to present product information with our iOS App and focusing more on the customer journey, analyze their behavior and conversion rate. Identify patterns in customer behavior to improve our current user flow and user experience. Work with engineering, design, and customer success teams to implement the solutions.

Date: Sept. 2017 - Jun. 2019

Duration: Research: 2 Months 3 weeks
Wires & Sketches: 2 Days
UI: 3 days
Collect Feedback: 6 weeks
Iterate: 1 month
Phase 2 Research: 2 months
Phase 2 UI update: 3 days

Category: App

Project Type: Visionary

Client: Apollo Robotics Technology

Marketing Page: Trueform App (via True Partnerships)

Role: Principal Designer

Other Team Members

Denis Cook, CEO
Ning Jiang, CTO
Michael Smith, COO
Ovi Parasca, iOS Lead Developer
Hannah Murphy, Director of Partnerships

My Process

Initial App Design – (Expand to Read More)

I continued to work with the team to document and discuss the product, business, and technical requirements. I wasn’t satisfied with the initial design.

From a usability standpoint, not having a consistent product name and price present between the various tabs caused me to question if these customers could remember those essential bits of product information, let alone to use the tablet to help them with the buying process.

Customer Feedback – (Expand to Read More)

Fortunately, we were able to get user feedback quite quickly from our retail customers and asked what they thought of the shopping experience? In return, they felt the visceral experience was unique but didn’t recall the product name or price. They also shared it wasn’t easy to get the product information directly to their phone or email (the CTA was in the last tab).

“The ability to collect customer feedback and quickly inform our business decisions on actual customer feedback attracted me to this project. There was low leadership resistance, opportunity to take customer feedback, iterate into a working solution, build, and launch!”
Scottie

Here’s a quick sketch I came up with on December 21, 2017.

I showed this around to the internal stakeholders. They rejoiced and saying it was a “Christmas Miracle” (no really, they did). Two days later, I delivered my design comps before heading out for my holiday break. A previous designer established the existing theme. Not my preference, but it was a project constraint I worked through until I presented a new system.

January 2018 Release – (Expand to Read More)

My CEO and I had a passionate disagreement with the handling of the orange CTA bar. To me, it felt heavy-handed. Anecdotally, we both agreed that the touch area should be clickable. Even though the click bound box can expand beyond the width of a button, he felt if you’re doing that – why not make the entire row one big button. I lost that argument and went ahead with his recommendation. We both looked forward to the results of customer feedback.

Jan'18 – Feb'18 Feedback – (Expand to Read More)

We collected six weeks of feedback from our locations. It resulted in customers didn’t know the entire bar was an actionable link, therefore missing out on collecting their text or email. Now with qualitative data to work with, I iterated through several solutions. Above is an animation of the existing flow.

May 2018 Release – (Expand to Read More)

We tested a double CTA to accommodate brands that wanted to collect either their phone number or email. In May 2018, my team and I considered supporting multiple SKU’s from one brand.

I enjoyed the ability to try different solutions out with our team. The opportunities to observe the results were refreshing to watch. Unfortunately, the minor adjustments didn’t provide meaningful results – permitting us to continue to iterate.

Below is a 2018 video which demonstrates how the Trueform Tablet was currently used in a retail setting.

Our Solution

New Opportunity in Spring 2018 – (Expand to Read More)

With the arrival of Spring 2018, our company had an opportunity to develop a solution for Rad Power Bikes – an awared winning local electric bike leader in the region. They considered having kiosks of their bikes in malls without any associates. As a test, we agreed to convert our Kiosk in Alderwood mall into a bike-centric experience.

Before & After pictures of Trueform Alderwood Kiosk

We took into consideration the traffic patterns of shoppers, the physical size of bikes with their stage, and I mapped out our iPads per Rad Power bike.

Customizing the App – (Expand to Read More)

We also discussed how the app will now behave since we had to fork the build between this Rad centric experience and the Trueform retail build. It was also a moment of genuinely thinking about the stand-alone shopping experience. We were motivated to take this new challenge.

Re-strategizing with our Data – (Expand to Read More)

As the team was customizing the app, the previous CEO wanted a shopper to go through the product content quicker. Previously, there were four tabs before the end of the customer journey. From our True Analytics reports, there were fall off in a typical shopping flow, leading to the abandonment of the session.

We also had configurations when there were just three tabs (if there was no product video) as a shopping experience.

“In theory, the multi-tab solution sounded ok when describing it, but it caused stress in our database of which product has videos and which don’t.”
Scottie

As easy as 1,2,3 – (Expand to Read More)

Some custom scripting was needed to help decipher for those experiences. During a brainstorming meeting, my colleague (Hi Hannah) suggested presenting the app in 3 tabs: 1 – discover, 2 – learn, 3 – compare. I yelled out, “Ah-ha! That’s it!” as Hannah blushed from my excitement.

Here was the modified design. We were still experimenting with CTA messaging – Calling out a dollar amount vs. “joined waitlist”.

With this change, we noticed higher conversions of a customer completing the sequence of tabs. We were able to leverage this meaningful design and apply it to the Trueform branch.

Below is a video walk through I filmed of the Rad Power Bike Kiosk in Alderwood Mall

My Impression

Our strategy has evolved based upon business factors such as customer (both B2B and B2C) behavior, reporting it into the True Analytics portal, and customer’s demand for shopping and purchasing those products from Trueform. With the original CEO stepping down, my CTO and I are responsible for the current app experience. Trueform’s strategy has shifted from data-focused to more sales focused. The result has improved Trueform’s revenue in a positive direction with sales for our brand partnerships.

My Learning

Trust my intuition more and call out issues more influential. Though reporting analytics is impressive – sales results are what keeps the lights on. Sales goals have always been the goal for any product maker or retail shop competing in today’s market. The previous team had to learn to prioritize features and feedback better. Focusing on data collection blunted our trajectory and limited our expansions for future retail partnerships.