Pretzel Kids: Where kids develop emotional management skills through yoga
Sponsored project through Northeastern University
Client: Pretzel Kids ®
Product Sector: Health, Wellness & Edutech
Team: Sanjana-Team lead, Fan-Project manager, Atul & Abhishek - Research analysis, Adé (me) - Product designer & Content Strategist
Duration: 8 weeks (Spring term 2022)
Discovery
The team’s discovery call with the CEO
From our various calls with Robyn Parets, the CEO, we learned that Pretzel Kids® yoga aims to be the go-to children’s yoga brand in the burgeoning mindfulness and yoga space for children. They strive to provide an easy way for schools, parents, and organizations to find qualified kids yoga teachers; and for kid yogis to get teaching jobs within their communities.
Problem:
The website was not great at converting visitors to customers
Goals
User goals
Give users more confidence - Users expressed in research that when they entered the website it didn’t feel trustworthy because it felt “old”, “had readability & navigational issues” & lastly, the search tool wasn’t optimized for users’ needs.
Business + Tactical goals
Increase conversion & revenue by effectively reducing the website’s high bounce rate. Optimizing the search experience for users will have a direct impact on revenue. This will be measured by monitoring the change in bounce and conversion rates via Google Analytics before and after the re-design
Impact
Scroll to see the process ↓
Heuristic evaluation to find current UX issues
To provide a direction to go with the project, I proposed to the team that during their downtime we should each have a look at the current website to identify areas of friction as well as current pitfalls in terms of usability and accessibility.
A few findings from our internal audit of the current website
1. Accessibility issues
According to coolor.co contrast checker toolPrimary CTA buttons are not accessible to those who suffer from color blindness.
2. Usability issues
In UX, a general rule of thumb is to not use drop-downs if there are more than 10 options.
Numerous usability tests have shown drop-downs can become difficult for users when presented with an overwhelming number. In this case 50 is a lot, especially for users in Wisconsin ;)
Search experience can be improved upon. Location based search can be done in one step; this site makes it two.
3. Lack of necessary information for users to make data-informed decisions between yoga instructors*
Imagine this, you’d have to forage through each yoga instructor’s profile page to get an idea about their prices, availability, number of reviews etc
This kind of information needs to be more accessible for users; especially as this is the main source of conversions from a business perspective.
*instructor’s faces are purposefully hidden
UX Research Analysis
Fortunately for us, our stakeholder had recently hired an external agency to conduct a UX research study so there was robust data to analyze and work with.
1. Affinity Mapping Findings
2. There was also an 80% bounce rate on the website and visitors typically spent about a minute before leaving- The website needs to be more engaging
⚙️ Ideation
Journey map and information architecture
Creating a journey map brought insights that a filter feature would be useful for optimizing our user’s search experience by providing a way to search directly for instructors that fit their price preferences.
After understanding our users’ needs and desires; it was time to plan out how the website’s layout would help users reach their goal of finding a Kid’s yoga instructor. The team met with the founder once more to uncover our ideas and discuss our newly conceptualized site map dedicated to turning visitors into converting customers.
Optimizing search to reduce decision paralysis 🔎
When it came to selecting which yoga instructor a user would like to move on with, it was clear Pretzel Kids’ search results page on their website was leaving visitors in a state of decision paralysis- a situation that can lead to a high abandonment rate for any e-commerce initiative.
The current interface didn’t provide
users with any form of information to make a decision... or at the very least, not any of substance.
This can cause decision paralysis in users that rely on certain indicators before deciding on learning more about a yoga instructor and ultimately booking them.
*instructors’ image are purposefully hidden
There’s this quote from a staple book in the design industry called “Don’t make me think, Revisited” by Steve Kruger that shares a quote that goes like this.
“If something requires a large investment of time—or looks like it will—it’s less likely to be used.”
We can’t expect visitors of this website to forage through each instructor’s page just to find:
Which instructor is the most affordable for their budget?
Which instructor has the best rating & reviews?
Which instructor works with their schedule?
To get an idea of how to present data that helps users be confident with their decision to pick one instructor over the other, the team and I conducted a mini-competitive audit to see how some like-to-like companies approached displaying this sort of information
Competitive analysis findings
Thumbtack's approach
Upwork's approachPricing data was a common staple on Thumbtack and Upwork’s website to handle users’ affordability concerns.
Apart from typical star ratings, we particularly liked how the information shown in red rectangles conveyed the instructor’s level of professionalism/experience - which can be another deciding factor for which instructor a user decides to learn more about.
Opportunity
We found that there was an opportunity to show users the days of availability of each instructor on the search results page.
For Pretzel Kid’s and Thumbtack’s interface, this was only done upon clicking on the instructor’s profile, while for Upwork you’d only find an instructor’s availability upon contacting them. We found this to not be super efficient as this created more steps for users to find what instructors worked best for their schedules.
On Pretzel Kid’s website, users only get to know a yoga instructor’s price or availability upon clicking on an instructor’s profile. Putting this information upfront on the search results page can streamline the search experience for users because they can be informed about these two details about instructors from the search results page but on the current interface, users can only do this one at a time by clicking on each instructor’s profile. From a user’s perspective, the way the current interface is designed, this endeavor takes too many clicks to gain information for each instructor making it tedious for users to make a decision.
Tying our findings into an informative search experience for Pretzel Kid’s users
Instructor’s search page that encourages user trust and answers user concerns
We added an instructor’s days of availability as well as their price to the search results page so users are informed up-front with what instructor is affordable for their budget and also is available on the day a user would like to hire them for. Certified instructors will have a certification label that was shown to provide social proof for the company’s services but also to foster trust so users feel more confident when looking to book an instructor.
We believed adding an instructor’s days of availability would be useful for users as they can scan and match an instructor’s availability against theirs and easily find the right instructor that also works within their schedule.
Filtering options based on preferences
Of course, you can’t optimize a search experience without adding filtering options. There was no filter feature in the current interface so this tool was specifically inspired by our “School Faculty” persona because a representative of this persona did mention that in a school setting, “what matters the most about finding a yoga instructor is finding one that is within their budget.”
So with filter tools, users can optimize their search endeavors by choosing to only search for instructors within their budget and also those that fit their schedules & more.
Phase 3: The booking experience
“Ok, I’ve found an instructor that fits my budget and is available on the day I need them; what about their time of availability?”
A user now has two indicators that let them know what instructors are within their budget and what instructors work best for the day of the week a user would need them. At this point, we thought these two indicators provided were a good enough investment for users to further dive into an instructor’s profile page.
We decided to make the booking experience functional in two ways. For users who plan to search & hire an instructor close to the day they are needed and for those who plan weeks ahead to hire an instructor.
1st. Booking experience:
Provides dates in close relation to the day a user has started their search
2nd. Booking experience
“View all” shows dates in a calendar view so users get a more holistic view of the instructor’s availability.
Thinking about affordances and signifiers
Keeping in mind I was designing for older demographies, I was aware it may not be extra intuitive to them that they can undo their selection by clicking on that same slot or choosing another slot.
To avoid any friction with this part, I added extra signifiers “Undo selection” to let users know that they can also just click on the button link to undo an action after having clicked on a certain slot.
What I learned and took from this project
Problem solving takes patience
I was dealing with two demographies whose backgrounds are relatively different than mine but I think that’s where emotional intelligence comes to play and why this project made me realize that it’s a pertinent skill for any product designer to have to understand & hypothesize solutions for users’ needs.
Communicating my design ideas to C-Level stakeholders
Speaking and presenting our design solutions to the CEO was an experience I would always be grateful for because I learned how to communicate the business-impact of my design decisions and the rationals behind them.
Challenge: Working with time-constraints
The team and I would have loved to conduct usability tests to ensure that our designs were intuitive but due to time constraints, we were only able to deliver the designs to the CEO. With that being said, the CEO and I are in regular contact as she is waiting for her developer to get back from maternity leave so we can start conducting tests and ultimately start development for the designs.