UX Research of Good On You

Learning the value Good On You, an ethical fashion brand ratings, is providing to users

Photo credit: Good On You

The goal for this project:
Understand the users and what value Good On You is providing to users. Synthesize insights as actionable recommendations to increase value for users and thus engagement and retention.

My role:
Volunteering as a UX researcher.
Verified the purpose of this user research, designed interview questions, conducted user interviews, synthesized insights from user research.

This project is still conducting user interviews.
(Last updated: 2020 summer)

Background

Good On You is an ethical and sustainable fashion brand ratings, both on the website and mobile app.

Since 2015, Good On You has built a database of thousands of fashion brands for their impact on people, planet, and animals. There are also many articles providing resourceful ethical and sustainable fashion information for users to gain knowledge without spending time researching by themselves.

Within these 5 years, more people show interest in purchasing sustainable and ethical fashion items. Sustainable and ethical fashion has become one of the most searched-for terms in fashion.

Therefore, it is time to verify if the value that Good On You provides meets the right purposes for users before moving to the next stage.

Communication & Verification with Good On You

I initiated this research by reaching out to Good On You and asking for a volunteer opportunity to contribute my skills for sustainable fashion. After several emails, the CEO and I decided to conduct user research to understand current users as my volunteer work.

Since I was not an internal member of Good On You, I did not know much about the current situations and users of Good On You. For user research, getting the right questions is key.

"How do people use this app?"

Therefore, before writing down a problem statement and designing questions for interviews, I had to verify the business goal for this research, avoid misunderstanding, and understand the current issues or problems that Good On You was facing.

I asked a lot of questions (business goals, information architecture, etc.) to make sure that the CEO and I were on the same page for this research.

Data Analysis

Not only I also asked for the user data to analyze to have a better understanding of user behaviors.

The data I got was processed. Therefore, I used data to find the correlations/ patterns and make assumptions for the preparation of defining problem statements.

An example of user data analysis before moving forward

Define Problems / Goals

Problem statements

During our communication and data analysis, we found that it was not clear for us about what motivations were behind users. We assumed most of the users were already familiar with sustainable fashion and knew what they were looking for, but we did not know who they were, how they've used Good On You, and what value Good On You has been providing them.

No clear personas - who are the users? (age/ gender/ understanding of sustainability, etc.)
User's motivation - what is the job that the users want to be done here?
Value - what value has Good On You been providing to users?

Goals

The goal of this research project was clear at the beginning - learning the value Good On You provides for users - emphasize the value for further site changes.

And there was another goal for this project - business goal. Monetization is often a tricky issue for informational websites. How to monetize but meanwhile not to let users worry was a concern for the Good On You team. Therefore, this was a business goal for this research to find out how users would feel about potential commercial relationships and monetization.

Project goal - learn what value Good On You provides for users
Business goal - any concerns from users about commercial relationships?

Research & Recruiting Methods

Research method

Since we had a clear goal for this research, which was to find out "why" from users, we decided to conduct user interviews instead of other research methods.

Recruiting method

There were 2 sites under Goon On You, one is the website and the other one is the mobile app. We did not know if the users were the same group of people since one did not need users to sign in. We wished to cover users from both sites to understand their motivations and needs.

After several discussions of finding the right participants, we decided to recruit participants who have signed up for newsletters from Goon On You. The list could have users from both sites.

Since I was based in New York and the Good On You team was in Sydney, we selected people around our timezones and cities to conduct our interviews. Users from these 2 continents cover over 60% of Good On You users.

Design Discussion Guide (Questions) for Interviews

After determining the in-person interview was our research method, I drafted a discussion guide (questions list) to start the conversation with the CEO to see if all topics that we would like to learn more from the users had been covered.

Draft of the discussion guide

From the discussion and feedback, the draft did not cover business goals (monetization and concerns from users about commercial relationships.) I expanded the last part, purchase, into three parts to explore these topics, which were brands, shopping journeys, and retailers. Since the team came up with 4 scenarios for users, the new discussion guide also provided 2 paths for users from different scenarios.

New discussion guide for covering more topics of business goals

Conduct User Interviews

This process starts after COVID-19 so we choose online interviews instead of in-person interviews. We use Google Meet as our online interview tool.
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This project is still conducting user interviews. (Last updated: 2020 summer)

Reflection

Even though I've not finished conducting user interviews, the insights from the interviews already show the patterns to me and prove some of our assumptions wrong. Now it is more clear to see what the next steps are for Good On You to create more values for the current users and potential users, meanwhile sustain the business.

This is another time I feel how powerful and important to listen to your users to benefit the business.

The final results from this research would apply to
1. validate the alignment about the value between Good On You and the users,
2. confirm any concerns of monetization and commercial relationships,
3. determine the priority of further site changes.