The Source Comics & Games
As the coronavirus limits in-person purchasing and digital versions of comics and games try to replace their printed and table-top predecessors, it jeopardizes brick-and-mortar retailers like The Source. Users and collectors of physical comics and games struggle to flourish in an environment where these stores are closing at an alarming rate. The Source Comics and Games is surviving now, but it is my job to harness the powers of UX to ensure it thrives for a long time to come.
Tools: Figma, Sketch, Google Sheets, Keynote, Otter, and Zoom.
Methods: scoping, competitive analysis, speed dating, directed storytelling, stakeholder interviews, semantic differential survey, fly-on-the-wall, secondary research, storyboarding, and multi-touchpoint strategy.
Deliverables: annotated wireframes, multi-touchpoint strategy map, client packet: recommendations report.
“Most comic shops make enough to get by if they make cuts, but some retailers depend on the generosity of family and friends to help support the shop.”
David Barnett and The Guardian
“Long a repository for tales of world-threatening cataclysms and doomsday dystopias, the comic shop in the coronavirus era now finds itself drawn into a fight for its very survival.”
Jake Coyle and The Associated Press
Goals
Foster Community
Preserve and Grow Customer Base
Encourage Purchasing
Research
Secondary Research
Secondary research uncovered obstacles in retail comic book and gaming shops, such as in-person purchasing during covid and digital competition.
"How do you make a million dollars in a store like this? You invest two million and wait." - Burl Zorn
Stakeholder Meeting
Our stakeholder meeting solidified my proposed goals, revealed previously introduced features, and illuminated opportunity spaces for feature implementation (e.g., the desire to emphasize community but no initiatives to support it).
Competitive Analysis
The Source faired exceptionally well in a competitive analysis with other retailers. The single opportunity space identified was the ability to perform online ordering. One of our proposed features must remedy this.
Fly-On-The-Wall
Approximately 70% of users navigate games or comics exclusively.
The average time in the store seemed to be 45 minutes, making for a long customer journey.
The largest painpoint identified was the checkout process. With short lines but long wait times, the end of the user's experience at The Source is where the most visible frustration was present. Our features must make up for this.
General Population Survey
82.5% of participants have been to a comics or tabletop games store, and 80.5% read comics or play tabletop games themselves. Our world is more immersed in this culture than one may initially imagine.
The most significant opportunity for a new feature is that 92.2% have seen media based on comics in the last year.
Speed Dating
Twelve recommended features were presented on storyboards via Keynote in a randomized order to five participants on-site. Users rated the desirability of each feature which allowed me to prune the twelve features down to nine primary ones, with three additional features salvaged for future consideration.
Community Survey
A tie between two community features demanded a final Source customer survey to determine which would be suggested for future recommendations rather than immediate implementation. A range of "alienation" to "belonging" was used to gauge how communal users found each feature to be.
Multi-Touchpoint Strategy Map
Each goal at the top of the map inspired the recommended features that follow beneath. Below are future recommendations to be considered.
Each feature is supported by a least two points of data collected from research sessions. The more a feature was supported by research, the higher the likelihood was that it would be recommended as a primary feature.
In a multi-touchpoint strategy, it is essential to balance the user's positive experience with the client's business needs. This can end up being a bit of a tightrope walk, for if one aspect takes precedence over the other, we may find ourselves in unbalanced realms of favoring one approach (e.g., just looking to make money over user satisfaction).
Feature Recommendations
Foster Community
“It all comes back to the community”
- Patrick Brynildson (Owner of Source)
The community features intend to bring users together, inform how the community relates to them and spread the word about it.
Community satisfies business needs by generating a foundation of users committed to The Source and potentially inspire evangelists.
Community satisfies users by providing a space that is inclusive, accepting, and may be integrated into their identities.
Preserve and Grow Customer Base
The aims of preserving and growing the customer base include simplifying access to The Source's offerings, attracting new customers, and not alienating the existing customer base.
Business needs clearly benefit from a more comprehensive customer pool.
Users benefit from shopping online, understanding how comics connect to pop culture, and providing a sense of purchasing pride on social media.
Encourage Purchasing
Purchasing behaviors may be encouraged by engineering purchase-centered events and including delighters at the end of the customer journey.
The business benefits as users tend to remember novel experiences best, particularly when present at the end of their customer experience.
Users benefit as their overall store experience is elevated by novelty and as they encounter generous gestures at checkout.
Conclusions
UX design does not merely aim to capture people's dollars but instead seeks to awaken user's hearts by providing a rich experiential journey. Business benefits as users return to experience this repeatedly. While fostering community, engaging the customer base, and encouraging purchases, we may still, and we must still, preserve our main intention: to serve and delight the user.