Example Reflection- Visualization tool

Challenge

The Sun & Beach online swimsuits, swimwear and bathing suits store is just selling  small and medium sizes of their products, all the plus sizes are stock in inventory.  Although they offer a lot of options and styles, specially designed for young and adult  females.

My challenge is to find the reason why the plus sized public doesn’t want to buy their  products anymore and create a viable solution to the problem.

Selection

To solve this problem I choose the visualization tool, which means thinking in a whole  new level and achieve a common understanding of the problem, idea or solution  using graphical and optical resources. This instrument put everybody in the same  place and helps to communicate in a more visual and clear way with stakeholders.  In other words, it’s to make a complex idea easier to comprehend and tangible using  visual thinking.

I selected this tool for my challenge because it helped me to define possible solutions  to the Sun & Beach store and to present them to potential and actual clients,  members of the team work and another important stakeholders.

Application & Insights

In the first place, I create a multidisciplinary team composed by a web designer, a  graphic designer, a physiologist and a marketer and publicist. Then we plan the  steps of our investigation, we started getting to know the sales history, web page  design evolution, products, brand corporate identity and the way they communicate  with their potential and actual costumers (speech, brand voice).

After we talked with the store CEO and all the crew members to really know how the  company worked and their perception and opinion of the problem, we interviewed  10 loyal clients and 10 potential customers, especially plus sized. The questions we  ask (supported by images, photos and graphics) were about web page design and  comfortability, product offer, fitting issues, package, promotions, payment options,  sizes, the models they used to show their products and all the essential elements  that convince them to buy there. Also we put the interviewed to shop online while we  were secretly observing their behavior, preferences and decisions. Through these  tools were gained some insights:

-  The women aren’t satisfied with their bodies (low self-esteem).

-  They look for something that highlight their best attributes or exactly to hide  the worst.

-  No one feels identified with the models because “they are so perfect and thin”.

-  The plus sized women felt the brand was not for them, just for skinny girls.

Getting to know insights affected the way we solved the problem, if we wouldn’t  listened the costumers feelings and seined their expressions we would not have  been able to create such a successful solution to the problem.

After the investigation we decided to change a few things about the web page design  and the store advertising campaign. We gave the brand a new spirit, by replacing  the perfect not-real models with normal and natural women. We change the  superficial voice and image of the brand for an empowering and empathic one, were  the costumers could be represented and feel identified with the model dressing their  possible next swimsuit or swimwear. The idea was to give a positive message  making them feel great about their bodies. We also made an adjustment in the web  page, making the model change depending the size you choose. And in the home  page, we showed all sizes models, with that simple change everyone will feel  included.

When we showed the results to the 20 women previously interviewed, all of them  said that they loved the idea and that being able to see it functioning in a mock up in  the computer has helped them to understand it better and do more feedback.

In conclusion, the visualization tool was applied in four stages of the problem solving  process. First of all, to order and investigate the problem, studying all the visuals and  written resources. Second, to ask visual questions in the interviews, giving the  women examples and photos. Third, to visualize and understand the purchase  decision process. And four, to show a design resolution to the problem to the  interviewed and to define the solution. In all the steps was really effective because  of its power to make everyone see the same picture.

Approach

In this specific case, I would like to have asked the women in the research to teach  me the kind of women they wanted to see in the store web page, instead of having  made the proposal myself. Even it worked, I think that it would be nice to know their  opinion without any influence. Maybe knowing their visualization of strong and  confident women could help us to create more impacting and life changing  messages.

