Overview
I served as the sole UX Researcher (UX Research Intern) in a community service team called 'Neighborhood Life' at a hyper-local app called Karrot.
The 'Neighborhood Life' team was looking for a solution that could provide users with a sense of community and encourage them to actively share their stories. As a UX Researcher, I was tasked with testing whether the hypothesized feature was viable and had product-market fit.
Based on UX research findings, I discovered that the hypothesized feature is not an ideal solution and was eventually able to decrease development time by 50%, saving time and money on unavoidable reworks.
~21 days (10/20/2023 - 11/10/2023)
2 UX Designers, 1 PM from
"Neighborhood Life" team
Concept testing, User Interviews (Semi-Structured), Idea Screening Session, Survey
Zoom, Google Workspace, Height, NAVER CLOVA, Figjam
Karrot is a community-driven marketplace that has MAU of 19 million and connects people locally for buying and selling second-hand stuff.
Since 2021, Karrot has been working towards developing a hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods, called "Neighborhood Life," which was the team I was part of.
Users can ask questions and share their stories with neighbors within their selected neighborhood.
Background
Data analysis revealed a clear pattern in how community users interact with the service, specifically showing that:
Users make their first visit (Entry), browse the feed (Lurking), and start writing comments (Commenting) when they see posts they relate to.
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72% of users begin with commenting before writing their first post and they write an average of 9-10 comments before writing their first post.
This implies there is a potential barrier, which results in only 0.8% of users writing posts.
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From the previous research findings, it has been discovered that there is a number of barriers for users to write posts in community feed.
U1: "I feel a sense of burden when sharing my story in a space where an unspecified number of people exist."
U2: "There are too many diverse stories being shared, and I see a lot of posts that I am not interested in.
- "Beginners" cohort (consisting of 6.3% of Neighborhood Life community who have not written any posts)
Problem Space
🚨 Due to the existence of varying age groups and types of people, users do not find common interests or a sense of community.
🚨 The community feed lacks sufficient content because users are not posting enough which eventually leads to low interaction time.
Research Goals
🟢 Find the best solution to the problems above and use it for concept testing.
🟢 Evaluate the validity of the concept/ hypothesized feature idea and identify user needs.
🟢 Provide useful data to back up the hypothesized feature idea and help the team to launch with confidence.
Research Timeline
This is a screenshot of a shared timeline from a Notion page within the 'Neighborhood Life' database. The research timeline is adjusted to Karrot's agile environment, which features a fast-paced and streamlined process.
I chose remote user interviews as my research method to answer the second research question.
Since it is an exploratory phase that aims to discover how users interact with other local business owners and their potential needs and pain points, I concluded that this approach is the most suitable one.
I explained to the stakeholders that this method will allow for direct user interactions, where we can observe their tones and reactions and also probe when necessary with follow-up questions.
Karrot typically conducts interviews remotely via Zoom to minimize the time and costing of recruiting participants across the country.
Study demographic:
The participant criteria were strictly controlled to ensure that demographic characteristics were all considered across the participants.
I implemented a funnel technique to break down interview participants' deeper motivations and attitudes specific to the hypothesized feature.
Started the conversation with broad and open-ended questions, such as,
"Can you tell me about your experience as a business owner? What is your day-to-day operations?"
and then finally got to the core question:
"How important is it for you to communicate with other local business owners in your area?"
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Pattern A: in a business that is currently too competitive and do not want this feature
Pattern B: in a business that is not competitive and want this feature
Pattern C: in a business that is not competitive and do not want this feature.
(One participant was excluded from the data analysis due to being identified as an outlier.)
To address the second research question:
"Do users need our new hypothesized feature, and is it viable?"
🟢 6 out of 9 participants indicated that they did NOT want this feature, leading to the conclusion that this new feature idea is neither viable nor needed for the targeted users.
