UX Case Study — Website Redesign for Birdie 2.

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jaclynrm – Medium

UX Case Study — Website Redesign for

Birdie 2.0
Product: MVP prototype of Birdie 2.0 — a responsive website that provides trusted
recommendations for restaurants by capitalizing on a user’s personal network of family
and friends
My Role: UX Consultant, Project Manager, Visual Designer
Team: Myself, Anneliese Klein, Ellen Li, and Frannie Laks
Duration: 2.5 Weeks

BirdieWorld.com was started and is owned by Lauren Rosenthal who was our stakeholder
and main point of contact throughout the project. We also worked with her developer Paul
Hiatt, as well as a few members from the Birdie Junior Board.

Specifically, the client asked that we provided a new design recommendation to improve
on not only the UI but the overall user flow of the current site. Also, while the client is
focused on the utilitarian use of the product, they are interested in potential ideas and
recommendations for a few additional features to incorporate into the Birdie 2.0 version
for the users. Another focus of ours was to show the value of the platform on the
frontside, rather than a person have to use it a few times to understand its worth.

Research — Exploration

At the beginning of this project, our team was given the assumption of the current
problem as it exists is that people do not trust the online reviews on competitors, such as
Yelp and TripAdvisor, as they are random people that the users do not necessarily trust.
Another assumption is that many people are keeping lists of their current
recommendations and restaurants they would like to try in various places and formats,
including mobile phone notes app, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, email threads, and
mentally. With these assumptions in mind, we jumped right into the research phase to see
if either of these could be validated as well as find as other problems that are currently
existing within this marketplace.
Competitive Matrix from the competitor research phase

Our team started with competitor research. The restaurant and bar review space is
currently an incredibly crowded marketplace. In addition to the more well-known
companies that we included on the competitive matrix, there are also dozens of other
startup apps in this space such as Rex, Salt, Spot, ChefsFeed, Truffle, and more. Lauren
mentioned an app “graveyard” in this space as well where many attempts to enter the
market have failed and gone to die. With all of the competitors provides a challenge to
figure out Birdie’s differentiation point and opportunity to stand out. This space is also
extremely feature heavy which you can see through the feature analysis of the
competitors. This helped us find which features will keep Birdie competitive while also
finding features that could help make it stand out from the crowd.
Feature Analysis from the competitor research phase

After the competitor research, we conducted usability testing on the Birdie website as it
exists currently. This allowed us to point out the usability and utility problems that may
already exist within the platform. We tested the current site on 6 users total (3 female and
3 male). Some of the findings we had from these usability tests include:

Utility
 5/6 expected to experience website’s value before signing up
5/6 expected to see list of recommended restaurants on
home page5/6 expected to experience website’s value before signing up

Usability

5/6 confused around Birdie’s language (Feed, Library, etc)

100% error rate when adding restaurant to their “to try” list

Quotes from users during the usability test on the Birdie 1.0 Beta website

Next, we sent out a screener survey to begin recruiting candidates for user interviews. We
received 81 responses in which 46 matched the criteria of having aBachelor’s degree or
higher and lived in one of these 6 metro areas: New York City, Chicago, Boston, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia. This criteria was set because the platform will first
be focused on growing within the top cities and travel destinations throughout the U.S.
From this screener survey, we conducted 16 user interviews. Three of these were from the
Birdie Junior Board which are current users of the platform and advisors for Lauren. The
given demographic breakdown for the platform was that users were 70% female and 30%
male which was then further validated through the user interviews. These interviews also
helped us to focus the target demographic age as well.
Information about the candidates used for the 16 user interviews

Synthesis — Compilation

The next phase that we entered was synthesizing all of the rich qualitative data we
collected through the user interviews. We started with affinity mapping by using likes,
dislikes, behaviors, and quotes from the current and potential users that we spoke with.
We created the following “I” statements which helped us to embody and empathize with
the user.
We also quantified some of the qualitative data collected, including the following:

93% (13 of 14) currently don’t write reviews

86% (13 of 15) highly value their friends’ recommendations
64% (9 of 14) keep a list of restaurants in various formats

We also collected and found out the following behaviors about the user in which we could
focus on capitalizing on rather than trying to change. The user:

does not feel obligated to leave reviews

depends on their friends’ recommendations
shares and ask for lists of recommendations

After finding out all of the above about our user, we noticed two different groups of users
that exist within the Birdie platform — those heavily creating the content versus those more
focused on consuming the content. This helped us in the creation of two different
archetypes: the Insider and the Enthusiast. The Insider loves exploring and discovering
new restaurants while the Enthusiast is dependent upon recommendations from the
insider.
The differentiators between the two archetypes

Using these two archetypes we then created our primary persona who is considered an
Insider and our secondary persona who is considered an Enthusiast. We had been given
one persona from the client originally, and while we did use this as a baseline we
incorporated many updates to it due to our user research, and then we also created the
secondary persona.
The primary (Insider) and secondary (Enthusiast) personas

After synthesizing all of the data from the research phase and keeping our two personas
in mind, we defined the following problem statement:

When choosing a restaurant, urban young professionals struggle to access

their trusted network’s recommendations in order to find one that fits their
needs. How might we provide a space where users can find relevant and
valuable recommendations in a way that is engaging and efficient?

Ideate + Design — Conception

Next, we took all of our research into the design phase. We started with two rounds of
design studio as a team, as well as a third round with our stakeholder and a current Junior
Board member.
A few team photos during rounds of of design studio (including with our stakeholder,
Lauren, and Junior Board member, Katie)

After the three rounds of design studio, we synthesized the dozens of feature ideas and
prioritized them using a MoSCow feature prioritization map. We also came up with a short
list of specified goals for the platform and the features that would correspond with these.

User Goals

Find reliable recommendations more efficiently

Make your list of notes about restaurants easily accessible
Sharing recommendations with friends easily

Features

Add a “All Friends Chirps” button directly on home page

House both saved places and all chirps on “My Lists” page
Add a share to text and email feature that allows selection of specific restaurants
MoSCow Feature Prioritization

Next, we created four task flows individually that helped us decide on which pages should
be created and built out first. We also did several rounds of hand sketches as a group, as
well as a storyboarding exercise to align all of our ideas for page layout before jumping
into the digital creation of wireframes.
Our team sketching wireframes and during a storyboard session

Usability + Usefulness
After finishing the digital creation of wireframes in Sketch and linking the first prototype in
Invision, we began usability testing. In total, we conducted four rounds of usability tests
with 18 users total — 5 users each in the first two rounds and 4 users each in the third and
fourth rounds. Overall throughout all four rounds of usability tests, some of the major
findings on utility and usability included:

Utility

3 of 5 found the home page crowded and not helpful in completing tasks
4 of 5 liked the share feature to text
4 of 5 wanted to see all friends collections at once

Usability

3 of 5 confused by “My Collection”

3 of 5 could not find their list of “to try” saved restaurants
4 of 5 could not save their restaurants to their to try list

Findings + Iteration

These usability tests led to a creation of four different prototypes, each with continued
improvements based on the prior usability test. Our iterations were mainly focused on the
overall user flow, as well as the home and the lists pages. On the home page, we were
specifically focused on providing the value to the user upfront, as well as focusing on the
trust existing within the platform. On the lists page, we were focused on how to make it
most understandable and useful for the user.

Iterations throughout the usability tests

Also, during the usability tests we kept track of a few KPIs, including task success rate
and the error rate specifically on someone saving a restaurant to their “To Try” or “Saved
Places” list. Our goal was to decrease the error rate from the 100% on the current
platform to 0% on the new prototype which we were successfully able to achieve through
our design iterations. Another goal was to have the task success rate for all users to be
100% which we were also able to achieve.

To view the Birdie 2.0 prototype, click here.

Conclusion + Next Steps

Upon the completion of this project, our team is extremely excited to continue to use and
follow the future of Birdie. It is a platform that we have found the need for through our
user research and have improved upon through prototyping and usability tests. While we
focused primarily on the MVP creation during these three weeks, we have many other
feature recommendations including matching and suggestion users through self-selected
tastes, as well as including simple and intentional notifications in some iteration. These
features would need to be created and tested as well.

Feature Rollout Plan

We also suggest taking the following next steps to move forward with this project:

Finish creating and conduct usability tests on the desktop designs

Research and test on current filter options
Follow the feature rollout plan to develop Birdie 2.0
Additional usability testing on 2.0 mobile and desktop once it is developed

Overall, working with this client and platform was extremely useful and taught me many
valuable things for my future as a UX designer. It was an interesting platform and industry
to dig deeper into, learn more about, and improve upon using the trusted networks of
family and friends to more efficiently keep track of and find recommendations.