Mobley: Building Customer
Relationship using Transparency
design research | service design | 3 member team | new york city, usa | 2020
Overview
Mobley is a furniture rental start-up that is trying to be more sensitive to the problems of the environment in the furniture industry. The company started with the aim to reduce the waste that is generated by furniture disposal due to 'fast' moving life. The transparency dashboard is aimed at communicating with potential customers about Mobley's sustainable practices and its impacts. It also builds trust by displaying previous customer satisfaction ratings and reviews for the service.
The Challenge:
Mobley shared their vision of becoming a brand and thought leader for sustainable furniture renting. This led us to question what sustainable practices do they currently follow? What does sustainability really mean to the company? What are the core values driving the company? And how can all this information be conveyed to Mobley's Customers?
Solution:
A dashboard that communicates transparently, sustainable service practices, and customer satisfaction to build trust for the brand while also acts as a scale to measure the company's sustainable practices and user feedback.
Our dashboard would help provide maximum information on the main page and increase the visit duration of each user. In addition, it will reduce the bounce rate and increase conversion rate by giving customers information that they would want to know more about.
Bounce Rate
Visit Time
APPROACH
With a focus on Mobley’s business and company culture, we conducted research interviews, surveys, and workshops to identify underlying core values and the current sustainability definition, influence, and practice. After the synthesis of our research, we used the insights gathered to guide the development of a solution that enables Mobley to practice and communicate a core value of the company combined with sustainability.
Learning Outcome:
Interacting with the founders of a start-up to learn their journey as well as how company culture is influenced by leadership. I explored and learn service design tools through culture and value perspectives.
My Role:
I was a part of the design research, synthesis, and prototyping process, with extra focus on:
Direction Setting for research and design - Outlined research plans and processes to set the direction for the project.
Process facilitation - Facilitating the design process and transitions between different stages in the design journey
Prototyping- Creating visual artifacts for prototyping using Adobe XD
DESIGN RESEARCH
Stakeholder Ecosystem Map
The initial desk research was aimed at understanding the service and product ecosystems. We identified key activities, functions, stakeholders involved and mapped them to find potential improvement areas with respect to sustainable practices in the service flow.
Value Proposition Workshop & Interviews
A Value Proposition Workshop was facilitated to better understand the lens with which the company is viewing customer pains and gains. The workshop utilized the Value Proposition Canvas and was conducted for all employees at Mobley, to add their thoughts to a life-sized canvas. From this exercise, we also learned more about their roles and responsibilities.
Independent guided discussions helped identify each co-founder’s personal journey and values. Interviews provided deep insight into the work culture they were trying to cultivate within Mobley. Interviews with other employees at Mobley informed us further about their interactions with the founder, hierarchy and decision-making process.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
Distilling Core Values
Value Alignment Survey
We distilled 7 values from the interviews and Value Proposition Workshop. Taking a step back in the process, we conducted another Survey within the founders and employees of Mobley with questions to check value alignment, situational value importance, and improvement areas based on what we found during the synthesis of interviews and workshops. This was to ensure that we could uncover how the underlying values are being viewed within the company.
Insights
This survey gave us an insight that sustainability isn't a core component of Mobley's business practices yet, it is seen only with respect to pieces of furniture that's rented and not as the value that's practiced within the business and service while transparency was a value that was ranked highest within all employees.
Sustainability is not a part of the business practice, it is seen as an improvement factor mainly for products. By connecting Sustainability and Transparency, stimulate sustainable practices within the business and among customers to improve efficiency, innovation, and stronger relationships.
IDEATION
The Journey with Transparency
How might we crystallize a sustainability strategy using transparency in the organization?
Building a transparent relationship with the customer
Company Sustainability Data
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Internal Value Performace
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Customer Satisfaction Ratings
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Building Transparency within Customers
Photos from previous user
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Rental Journey of the furniture
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Story of the piece
PROTOTYPING & USER TESTING
Dashboard for Transparency
The transparency dashboard would aim to create information transfer about the company's practices, customer experiences and values. This way of informing customers would affect brand perception and trust positively. We built prototypes of the dashboard that would be live on the home page of Mobley's website. Two rounds of user testing informed further changes and improvements in the prototypes.
We tested the dashboard experience and influence on decision making, brand perception, trust, and transparency. The second round of testing consisted of 10 in-depth interviews over Zoom.
Prototype v0
Prototype v1
Prototype v2
User Voice:
“The new information fits in comfortably with the theme of the site. Information is very relevant to a user and helps in the decision-making process.”
“Facts and figures always help, very clearly presented, the promise of information that isn’t just from the company”
65% users said it helped decision making 88% users trusted the information provided
THE FINAL PROTOTYPE
IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
Using Transparency to drive sustainable practices
We also worked on a plan for the implementation of these dashboards along with additional components for the future. For more details about the process and outcomes view here.