How (fill in the blank) was an exploration of UX design
By: Jesse Bandfield
Tags: Careers, UX Design, Experience, Small Business, Storytelling

How (fill in the blank) was an exploration of UX design

Everyone has practical job experience that informs their role as a designer, and it often comes from past non-design roles. This is my story.

Photo by Kaique Rocha from Pexels

As designers, we all have past experiences to draw from that inform our work now. Design is problem solving. Design is making intentional decisions. And the experiences that first taught us how to understand problems and make decisions still inform our processes. Think back to your first job. What aspects of it did you gravitate toward? What parts of the job really showcased your skills?

My first job was at a used music store. I was on the sales floor, and was terrible at it. I tried to spend most of my time taking photos of music gear for the website while avoiding customers. That summer, I did sell three trombones though. Why? Because I played the trombone. I knew the instrument, could talk about it, and could reassure parents that the money they were paying for their child to start an instrument was worth it. That summer I learned that it takes research to be convincing, and that personal experience, or being able to tell a story out of someone else’s personal experience, is hugely important.

UX design is such a varied field, that regardless of your background or experiences, you’re bringing something valuable to the table.

Designing a Brick and Mortar.

Reaching into the more recent past for inspiration, I realized my venture of starting a small business rewarded me with invaluable experience in UX design. Like design, small businesses seek to solve problems for its customers. By providing services and goods, business provides a community access to those commodities that they find helpful. Its assumptions are quickly validated: are enough customers buying the product? Is the business solving the right problem? If a business isn’t aligned with its customers, it either adapts or fails.

Starting in 2017, I came alongside a non-profit in my neighborhood to design, launch, and manage a small business. I had been living in the neighborhood for almost three years and was beginning to put down roots: getting a sense of the history, people, and businesses that made up those blocks that I considered home. The non-profit had already begun the research process by talking with the community, discovering which physical and social needs weren’t being met, and then developing a plan for their business: a café laundromat. The business would meet a physical need by being a laundromat accessible to this community without a car or bus ride, and it would meet a social need by providing a space for people to stop by during their comings and goings.

My research included doing my laundry at local laundromats and chatting with fellow customers: What about the experience was good? What was joyful? What wasn’t working? I also came from the world of coffee shops, where every day I would talk with regulars, understand their motivations for making the shop a part of their weekly habits. What value did they find in visiting the café?

From there, I began to define my requirements and ran into my first problem. The non-profit, my key stakeholder, wanted a café laundromat that served all members of the community. Because they required diversity, I didn’t have a key persona to work from, but several personas who had differing needs. How could one establishment be designed to allow connection across racial, generational, and socio-economic barriers?

Designing for diversity is complex. It takes understanding the needs of many customers, and finding ways to meet each of those needs through one simple design. While I definitely didn’t get it right on the first try, throughout the design process I followed the mantra “Design for ages 2 and 102.” By designing for the extremes, I hoped to catch everyone in between. It meant that our menu was simple and accessible, that we greeted everyone who walked in the door, that our sugar and cream containers were clearly marked, and that the seats were comfortable for all body types. It was important that everyone felt safe, and that they felt comfortable leaving their clothes in the dryer as they wandered around the building.

Ideate and Build

Now that I understood the why and the who, I began to really dig into the how. The non-profit hosted vision nights where the community gathered to imagine what could be possible in the space. I served cold brew and iced tea at events to gauge whether my recipes needed tweaking, and discovered how much cream and sugar we would go through. I met with interior designers and community leaders to start envisioning how the space would work together toward the enjoyment of our customers. I also scouted coffee roasters and drank a lot of coffee. I made sure that at the core, our visions were aligned and that the coffee was meant to be accessible to a wider audience even as it supported the farmers who grew the crop.

Another customer frustration that came out of research was a lack of options to buy fresh food in our community. To meet this need, I partnered with vendors who were making strides in the local food scene, who focused first on their customers and the planet before profits. I knew that as a business I had the power to make decisions on behalf of the customer that would empower the local community, and choosing my vendors based on my personal convictions did just that. Not only did the café get set up with some of the best snacks and lunch options that existed in the city, these choices also meant that the food was made by local hands using quality ingredients, and that it decreased waste by using recyclable and compostable packaging.

Before opening our doors, many tiny details came together to bring the space to life and make it work for our customers. I made sure that electrical outlets were plentiful and well placed. I created playlists that were filled with great jams that appealed to multiple generations. I hired baristas who were warm and welcoming, who could establish that feeling of family within the space, and then trained them to make tasty drinks. Soon enough, we were ready for testing.

Testing

On the day we opened our doors for the first time, the espresso grinder broke. It was consistent throughout weeks of training, and then stopped grinding within our first half hour. I’ve come to expect moments like this: in business you have to plan for the worst and keep calm when the worst happens. I made a call to our roaster to gain some insight, and chatted with customers as if I were stalling for the main act. After opening it up and doing a thorough cleaning it started grinding faithfully again, and I became more confident in my ability to solve problems, ask for help from others, and keep others calm in stressful unplanned situations.

For the first time this was the full café laundromat experience. We had had a few pop-ups prior, but this was the first time we invited paying customers into the space and were able to see their reactions as they wandered around, threw clothes in the wash, and sipped coffee. Call it usability testing, or call it the first day in business. As customers pushed tables a few inches over I saw that that placement was indeed more comfortable. As I heard kids complain about their hot chocolate not being sweet enough, I learned how to have our baristas better set expectations and make sure the sugar was always full. There was plenty of affirmation too: especially when customers looked around the space in awe of the tall windows and little touches of decoration.

Through testing, our systems got better. We measured better metrics in a more accurate way, and we learned to understand our customer’s expectations. We got better at team communication. The process of being in the space and experiencing customer interactions each day helps refine our services and make them better for the customer and, in turn, the business. Each day I could see the value the business brought to the customer and doubled down on our strengths while tweaking our weaknesses.

• • •

Using a human-centered approach to designing a business helps to ensure the business meets customer needs in the most efficient way possible, which in turn gives the business a big boost in its march toward profitability. By caring about the needs of the customer, it reflects the ideals of the community and can, together with other small businesses, make a community more resilient.

This story, of how starting a small business was an exploration of UX design, is only my story. How have the experiences of your life enriched your understanding of design?