Sunday, July 25, 2010

About Me


Colorblind



Colorblind’s objective was to understand how consumers relate to sustainability and to make these learnings applicable and actionable for design teams.
Through a partnership with Communispace, in depth fieldwork was paired with online dialogues from 6,500 respondents.

The project resulted in a set of key themes, as well as a set of approaches to designing sustainable offerings with the consumer perspective in mind.

Melting Pot



As part of a course, we were tasked with improving the usability of The Melting Pot site
according to a detailed set of requirements. Changes made support The Melting Pot’s business goals to increase the amount and the quality of site traffic. These increases drive more frequent restaurant patronage, and encourage customer loyalty, which in turn increase revenues. These changes were presented in the form of:
•A revised Information Architecture (IA) model detailing content organization that defines a navigation model
•Annotated wireframes of the Home, Locations, and the Menus pages

Broadway



I designed a site for people who would like to see a Broadway show by exploring the journey of a Broadway experience from start to finish. I used metaphor brainstorming for inspiration. From the brainstorming and deconstruction I will took one main idea and severalsmaller ones and creates a rough sketch wireframe.

Gen Y Banking

As part of a class in field methods, I set out to understand how banking should work for Generation Y. The research goals were to understand how members of Generation Y who currently have or have had a bank account, think about money and how banking should work for them. Explore the key services and tools that will increase market share and customer loyalty among Gen Y users when it comes to banking.

For this project I scoped the project in terms of time, budget, and goals as well as planned, recruited for, and conducted interviews. Finally, I analyzed and compiled recommendations.
I conducted interview with six employed teens who have bank accounts, two of which were in high school, two in college, and two full time employed. During these interviews I explore philosophies around money management, setting and managing financial goals, andinteracting with touch points of traditional banking.
Key take-aways included:


• Teens do not comparison shop banks and are unsure about the features they should look for in a bank. This makes parents the largest source of financial advice.
• Teens do not comparison shop banks and are unsure about the features they should look for in a bank. This makes parents the largest source of financial advice.
• Teens do not possess strong money management skills and are overwhelmed by the process of saving.
• Teens prefer going to their bank location
• Seeing money makes it real for teen

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Chipotle Mexican Grill


For a course in Ethnography, I conducted a field study of one Chipotle Mexican Grill location.

Chipotle Mexican Grill is a fast-food burrito restaurant. It was founded in 1993 by Steve Ells in Denver, CO and currently over 950 locations in 35 states. Each of these 950 locations has a unique layout while keep within the look and feel of Chipotle branding using stainless steel, rough concrete floors, exposed fixtures, and the signature color maroon. The mission of Chipotle is “Food with Integrity”, using naturally raised, grass fed meats and fresh, local produce.

As part of my research I visited the same location 15 times over 10 weeks for a total of 30 hours of observation. I observed employee-employee, employee-customer, and customer-customer interactions. I interviewed seven employees, or crew members, as well as a designer who worked on several Chipotle interiors. Finally, I reviewed company training materials and secondary research on service design, servicescapes, and queues.

As a result of my research, I found that the physical environment of Chipotle is not intuitive to novices. Also the method of ordering and expected script are confusing to new customers.

Key Solutions:

Navigation cues that guide customers to appropriate location

Menu that details step by step ordering process

Create a service flow chart that outlines interaction with customers