Recommended solutions for a an e-commerce store to help them provide the same experience as a “mom-and-pop” store
Highlights
Methods applied: Rapid Contextual Inquiry, Affinity Wall, Interviews, Cultural Model, Sequence Model and Project Planning
Deliverables:
Final Report
Final Presentation
Instructors: Judy Olson, Ixchel Faniel
Course: SI501-Contextual Inquiry and Project Management (Fall 2007)
Teammates: Dale Myers, Jonathan Cohen, Kathleen Ludwig, & John McNew
Client: Station Enterprises, Ann Arbor
Challenge
Our team of five graduate students worked with a toy retailer in Ann Arbor to help them improve a specific information flow of their business. The retailer had online sales channels via a website and Amazon, as well as a traditional brick & mortar store. The retailer had developed a new strategy to increase the online sales channels to sustain the rapid growth. Our task was to analyze the new order fulfillment process, identify potential breakdowns, and provide recommendations on how to improve the process.
Process
We started by interviewing the owner and the employees about their work and role in the process. We held interpretation sessions after each interview to get the entire team on same page and write ‘affinity notes’ that captured specific pieces of information from the interviews. In total, we captured 180 affinity notes, which we used to construct a affinity diagram. The affinity diagram helped us understand and make sense of our data by identifying themes and trends.
Next, we further interpreted our data by building a sequence model, communication model and cultural model of the organization. We ended by preparing an actionable report with three pairs of findings and recommendation. Our client implemented most of our recommendations even before the we submitted the final report.