KushZone
A new solution for the recreational cannabis delivery service industry
Overview
In California, the trend for cannabis delivery services has seen a tremendous increase due to legalization of these services. It has become the hottest business in cannabis. Many startups such as Eaze and Speedweed are trying to be key players in this marketplace.
How can we enter this highly competitive industry? Let me take you through the journey of my experience building a cannabis social e-Commerce platform that is going to create a new way to shop for cannabis.
The Problems
Overview:
1
Customers are struggling to know the product quality when they shop for weed online
2
No effective way to find products and promote products
3
Both dispensaries and customers get frustrated about the incorrect inventory information online
4
Paying cash only brings potential safety hazards to dispensaries
Solution Keywords:
Solution
A social e-Commerce platform where weed-lovers or dispensaries can post their authentic product reviews and product-using experiences via short videos and photos. It also connects weed consumers with a variety of dispensaries where they can shop online.
Save Time
when buying
Make Money
when selling
Share Content
with like-minded weed-lovers
This is a very fun and big project, which includes a B2C e-commerce app and B2B online inventory management software that allow dispensaries to easily update inventories or monitor their marketing performance. Today I want to use two challenges we encountered when we designed the KushZone app so as to share my design thinking process.
Understanding The User
We started our project by trying to understand our target audiences-dispensaries and buyers.
We conducted user interviews with 7 weed lovers and 3 dispensaries. Based on the interviews, we collected a lot of useful data. We then used the affinity diagram method to organize our research finding data into groups based on their relationships.
We found some key insights that need to be addressed for a delightful experience.
User Insights
Pain Point 1: "The path to finding the products is clunky".
Pain Point 2: "Customers are struggling to know the quality of the products".
Pain Point 3: "It is hard and expensive to promote products and brand awareness.
Pain Point 4: "Pay cash only brings potential safety hazards."
Weed Lover cares about:
-
Quality of the products
-
Ease in searching for products
-
Reasonable prices and deals
-
Time spent on discovering new products
-
Delivery service safety concerns
Dispensary cares about:
-
Promoting products
-
Increasing brand awareness
-
Generating more sales
-
Ease in updating inventory
-
Delivery guy carrying cash is not safe
Design Challenges
01
Design a product that makes search and discovery of products easy.
"The path to finding the products is clunky!"
I don't get any information besides the price and the name. It is hard to tell the quality and to compare.
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"The path to finding the products is clunky. I always have to scroll to the bottom to find concentrates"
Better filtering logic and category navigation
To design a better hierarchy of logical navigation and filter system, we analyzed other competitors, did online article research and conducted card-sorting exercises. Through the exercises, I was able to better organize and label category navigation and filter items to employ the most logical structure for them.
Most popular search categories
Reasons for using cannabis
I placed the most commonly used search categories icon button on the top part of the homepage, so users don't need to scroll to discover all the categories. They can easily see all the options at a glance and navigate their way down. Based on reasons for using cannabis I also created thematic filters which allow the user to filter by usage.
Category Navigation
Thematic filters
Reduce friction in locating relevant products on the product list page
During the user testing, we observed that due to the insufficient list item information, the test subjects had to go back and forth between product list and product page to learn the most basic and core attributes of that product, such as effect and flavors. This increased the friction for the user to locate their relevant products.
Grid vs List
We wireframed two types of product listing page. A is using grid structure and B is using list structure. They both have pros and cons. The grid view is more appealing to the eye and looks more harmonious. but the list view is great for efficient scanning because it allows us to present more relevant information. In this case, the list view is our best bet because the user is making a decision based on more factors than the image alone.
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WINNER
An effective way to show core attributes in products listing page
"Customers are struggling to know the quality of the products"
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Pain Points
Lots of products don't have reviews.
Buy expensive but low-quality products.
Time-consuming to do products' research.
Needs
Encourage user to share reviews and recommendations.
An effective way to research new products and knowledge
Need a cannabis expert to guide to buy products that are best fit to user's need
Based on the interview data, we realized that users go to various platforms to educate themselves about products, such as youtube, Instagram, leafly or even go to a storefront to ask knowledgable staff. So why can't we just wrap them together as a feature into our app?
ALL IN ONE
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Discover the best kush in KushZone review sharing community
We integrate this social media feature into the e-commerce platform. So cannabis buyers can post and share their shopping recommendations, product reviews and lifestyle stories in the form of pictures, videos, and text. Our vision is trying to create a thriving cannabis lover community and become a trusted source for advice and recommendations from cannabis buyers.
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I think it is a solution that can kill two birds with one stone - reduce buyer's pre-research time and help dispensary or brands to raise brand awareness and help to generate more customer leads.
02
Design a solution to help buyers discover and learn new products
​
Design System
MORE SCREENS
HIGH FIDELITY DESIGN
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Social Media
Thriving Online Community
Cannabis buyers share informative content including product reviews, products using tips, and cannabis-related lifestyle stories in the form of pictures, videos, and text.
Influencers and celebrities can also share their interesting content or work with brands to promote products to followers resulting in increased brand awareness, user engagement, and customer leads.
User-Generated Content
Apart from creating their own content, users can also save posts, interact with others through "likes/comments", or even press "follow" to subscribe to the user or brand they like, which encourages users to create more interesting content for their followers.
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Official Brand Account
Brands or Dispensaries can set up an official account/store to sell products and interact with customers. They can post their own articles or videos, which can include information about new product launches, promotions and deals to build connections with customers. It is a cost-effective way to boost market awareness and sales.
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E-Commerce
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"Read-Like-Buy" Cycle
After reading reviews and stories posts, users can purchase the products directly by clicking the product link. The feature greatly reduces consumers' time costs on searching.
Ease Of Search For Products
Helps shoppers get to what they want faster and without running into unnecessary complexity paths to purchase. We focus on the user experience by providing shopping categories, filters, and comparison capabilities.
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View More Works
AI Hendrickson Toyota
UX Design / Front-end Development
