60 Graus
During these Covid times, it is no secret that many businesses are struggling most importantly the small, businesses are the ones who struggle the most. With so many everyday services reaching customers online the local laundromat in Lisbon 60 Graus was no different.
How might we promote the services offered that make us unique?
About the Project
I tasked with a project to find a local business in need of a website redesign and to design a mid-fidelity prototype. My team reached out to a local laundromat that offered both serviced and self-service washing & drying as well as free laundry folding. Furthermore, this laundromat put an emphasis on community but having community patio events would hold a place or people can reserve. Moreover, 60 Graus has a small shop of laundry products customers can purchase.
Stakeholder Interview
My team and I started our research process by interviewing our stakeholder Leida at 6o Graus to gain further insights. We discovered that although many people go to the laundromat about 83% indicated that they would like to at least be able to book a drop-off online so that they could just go to the laundromat drop-off their dirty clothes and pick it up that day or the next. We discussed goals to increase profits, overall goals for the laundromat, and customer pain points. Leida was very clear when saying she wanted to emphasize the idea of bringing the community together through the laundromat’s patio so we also discussed having an updated events calendar. After interviewing Leida our goal was to ensure the overall design was clean, simple, and intuitive.
Competitor Analysis
60 Graus stood out amongst its’ competitors as it is one of the only laundromats in the area that offers drop-off and pick-up services. Only Mr. Jeff was a direct competitor, as it also offered drop off and pick up services. But what it lacks is the sense of familiarity and closeness to the neighborhood. Furthermore, 69 Graus has a modern, clean, and high-end style while still being affordable for people to access the services.
Survey
We conducted a survey in which 80 people participated to understand what their laundry needs/habits entailed and how 60 Graus could enhance the users’ laundry experience.
User Interviews
“There is always a friendly face to help”
— Quote Source
“It’s the first time I’ve ever liked doing laundry”
— Quote Source
“I wish I could have this experience at home”
— Quote Source
“I feel a great sense of community here”
— Quote Source
User Personas
Amélia is 74 years old and lives in a small house in Barrio Alto. She lives with her husband and they’ve lived in the neighborhood for 50 years. She doesn’t have a washer at home and her back isn’t what it used to be. She wants more time to tend to her husband and spend time with her grandkids. Having a laundromat with kind people is an essential service for her so she is grateful to have 60 Graus in the neighborhood.
Andrea is 35 years old and lives in Santos, Lisbon. She is a busy mother of two with limited time on her hands. She owns a nail studio so she has intense days and a busy schedule. Andrea needs a lot of support so her day can run smoothly. Dropping her clothes off at the laundromat allows her to spend quality family time, focus on other activities, and have the comfort of knowing her laundry is in trusted hands.
Site Map
My team got together and created a new site map to reflect our vision for the information architecture. We decided to change the home screen and keep it as simple as possible with page options available to the users. We originally planned on having a step to get from booking a trolly to service information but this proved to be an unnecessary and frustrating step to the users. Furthermore, we cut down on screens that seemed redundant and simplified the language for the users. To validate our site map, we created a card sorting test to see how users would organize products, tips, and promotions. We were able to make valuable changes and finalize the happy path we would focus on.
Card Sorting
Card sorting validated our site map and allowed us to understand how the users visualized the website, the language used, and what felt most intuitive to them. We were able to see what absolutely was a must when it came to what was featured on our pages.
Lo-Fidelity
To design our lo-fidelity as a team, we used the round-robin method. We started on a different screen of our happy path and sketched out what we imagined the page would look like. After a minute of sketching, we would pass the sheet around so another could make a new version or make annotations. We gathered our sketches and highlighted the parts we liked and aspects that needed improvement. In the end, we had a consensual low-fidelity product to start testing.
We tested our lo-fidelity prototype and tasked users with selecting a laundry service. We hoped to see if our filtering and sorting options were intuitive, and wanted to find out if our flow was simple enough. After testing we found we still has too many steps. Our method seemed too long to just choose. service so we were able to confirm what needed to be cut down.
Mid-Fidelity
With all the changes from the lo-fidelity user testing, we created a mid-fidelity prototype to test. We discovered some basic prototyping issues, alignment problems, and found that users thought our pop-up screens were too large and intrusive. More importantly, we found users needed to straight away see the rates for the service before decided if they even wanted to continue clicking on anything. We also added a tracking pop-up so that when users finally dropped their laundry they could track the progress of their laundry to see when it would be ready for pick-up.
We created our final mid-fidelity prototype, organizing 60 Graus in an informative and modern manner. With this prototype, we believe the new experience is helpful, safe, and accessible.
