About
Hutch is a digital marketplace on a mission to make it easier for people to browse, buy and sell second-hand furniture and homeware online.
In early 2021, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside Hutch founders to help build out our design process, including researching the user needs and mental models for our new product, and facilitating workshops to ideate user-centered solutions ahead of product development.
Project Goal
Conduct in-depth research with two distinct user groups, and use findings to facilitate an ideation session to create a tangible feature roadmap for Hutch.
My role
I was the sole UX Designer working on this project alongside Hutch founders, Katie and Georgie.
Timeframe
January to April 2021
(3-month project)
The Problem
While the concept of fast fashion is fairly well-known, the same consideration is rarely given to interiors and homeware. Fast furniture refers to mass-produced, inexpensive homeware, often rapidly churned out in response to the latest design trends peppering social media feeds.
The dramatic increase in furniture consumption means the industry is heavily damaging our environment. Hutch has set out to battle fast furniture and help people make more sustainable, informed choices.
Our Hypothesis
Renters and new homeowners need a less overwhelming, reliable, and affordable way to shop for preloved vintage homeware and furniture online.
We believe that by creating a social and enjoyable platform where people can browse and shop second-hand furniture, we will encourage more people to shop sustainably, as well as create a marketplace where small businesses could reach a much bigger audience.
Discovery | Researching the market
To start off our research process, we conducted a high-level competitive analysis listing any potential competitors of Hutch - both direct and indirect - and reviewing their weaknesses and strengths.
By understanding our competition, we were able to identify a gap in the UK furniture and homeware market for a specialist, curated marketplace like Hutch (a gap that's been successfully filled in other categories, e.g. Depop for fashion).
Competitor research
Hutch Target Audience
To better understand the target audience for Hutch, we did audience analysis across a wide range of furniture and interior design websites. Analysis showed us three clear target demographics and helped us understand their interests and lifestyle:
Young Culture Vultures
Likely to be in a partnership or cohabiting, and living in a first home or in a rental property they have furnished themselves.
Creative & Busy Parents
Likely to be a small but growing family living in their own home or a long-term rental.
40+ Interiors Fans
Most likely to be in an owned home and have more time and money to spend on interior pieces that enrich their home
User Research | Getting to know our audience
After this initial desk research, we had a better understanding of the market that we’re trying to enter with Hutch. In order to really get to know our target audience and the challenges they might be facing, we also undertook some primary user research. The two audience groups we targeted were:
Buyers - anyone interested in using Hutch to browse and buy second-hand, vintage, or antique pieces.
Sellers - small businesses or individual vintage or antique homeware sellers who have expressed their interest in using Hutch.
Research into Hutch Sellers
At first, I surveyed 26 and conducted 3 further interviews with small business owners - potential Hutch sellers - to better understand their needs, desires and challenges when it comes to selling homeware online.
Our key takeaways were:
The majority of small business owners use Instagram to sell their products, however the likes and followers on Instagram don’t always lead to more purchases and an increase in sales.
The biggest challenge in selling furniture and homeware online was reaching the right type of audience.
The local community aspect is hugely important for independent, small businesses - it helps to meet like-minded people, both customers and other business owners.
Synthesising the findings
Interviewing and surveying small business owners has not only highlighted the challenges they face when selling preloved furniture online, but also helped us to uncover people's feelings towards homeware, sustainability, and the preloved pieces that they sell.
Once finished with the research, I created an affinity map to cluster similar topics, behaviours, pain points and goals that I uncovered during the interviews. This allowed me to create a detailed user persona - Rebecca - which closely represents our potential sellers.
Meet Rebecca
Research into Hutch Buyers
As well as talking to independent business owners to understand their needs, we also ran in-depth research into their customers, specifically focusing on people who tend to shop for furniture or homeware at least once or twice a month.
We have gathered 72 survey responses in total, and interviewed 4 people to uncover their behaviours, frustrations, and shopping habits when it comes to preloved furniture. Our audience was:
78% female;
The two main age groups were 25-34 (54%) and 18-24 (24%);
34% of participants were homeowners, with the majority 66% currently renting a house or an apartment.
Our findings revealed that:
The majority of survey respondents use social media to find new products and homeware brands to shop from, or simply Google the item that they are after.
However, with too many products and places to choose from, people struggle to find what they need and want - especially when shopping second-hand.
The biggest worry when it comes to buying preloved furniture online is the product quality.
Biggest challenges when shopping second-hand homeware online
(based on survey & interview answers. Each dot represents a time the challenge was mentioned.)
Synthesising the findings
The surveys and interviews with our buyer audience have yielded a significant amount of insights. Similarly to seller interviews, people seem to have really valued our efforts to uncover their needs, and by doing so, allow them to participate in the creation process of our product.
At this point, it seemed that we have gathered enough information to create a strong product roadmap for Hutch. However to do so, I first had to synthesise the research findings, and identify the overlapping themes. I created an empathy map that highlighted the common feelings, thoughts, and activities of the people we've interviewed.
Prior to conducting user research, we did a quick audience analysis based on our competitor's services and products. This allowed us to identify three distinct user groups I mentioned above - Young Culture Vultures, Creating and Busy Parents, and 40+ Interior Fans. Throughout our surveys and interviews, we were able to dig deeper into the first two audiences, which meant I was able to produce two detailed personas to represent our two main audience segments.
Meet Sarah & Louise
Sarah is a 23-year-old copywriter currently renting a shared, semi-furnished apartment in London. She’s keen to furnish her home with quirky but timeless vintage pieces but doesn’t want to spend hundreds of pounds as she tends to move around a lot.
Louise is a 34-year-old Marketing Manager from Bristol. She has recently furnished her new house and although she would have loved to have more vintage and upcycled pieces in her home, she feels like she doesn't have enough time to browse online for hours in search of something she may like.
Facilitating an ideation workshop
Once we had our research findings analysed, as well as personas and empathy maps created, we were in a great place to start brainstorming solutions to our users' problems.
To do so in an efficient way, I set up an Ideation workshop with Hutch founders, Katie and Georgie, as well as our other team members from brand and marketing teams. I then created a Miro board, and used our research findings to set the context and really explain the problem that we're solving with Hutch before kicking off the workshop.
How Might We?
Through our research for Hutch, many common insights and themes have emerged and been repeated by our potential customers. I identified 4 key themes that feed into the main problem that we are solving, and then used them to create How Might We questions to brainstorm feature and solutions ideas for Hutch during the workshop. An example of these themes and How Might We's is below.
Workshop summary
The ideation workshop was a great success. Everyone involved was inspired by the problem we're trying to solve and felt comfortable scribbling down their ideas on the Miro board. I found that using HMWs was definitely the right approach for our brainstorming - each question suggested that a solution is always possible and the are a variety of ways to approach it.
As a result, we ended up with a bunch of great solution ideas which I then grouped into feature groups, such as personalisation, trust, ease of use, and sustainability. This allowed us to then prioritise our ideas using the prioritisation matrix, identifying Must Haves and Nice to Haves which were added to the Hutch roadmap.
Pitching Hutch to potential investors
The main goal of the Hutch project was to conduct in-depth user research, uncover peoples' needs, and use that knowledge to create a strong, tangible product roadmap for Hutch.
Alongside this, however, I also helped Hutch founders to wireframe and design a few initial app features, and create an interactive prototype to showcase to their potential investors.
Key Learnings
User Research doesn't have to be a time-consuming process: throughout this project, we surveyed over 100 people and interviewed quite a few of them as well. I assumed at first that this will take longer than it actually did, however, setting up a clear research strategy ahead of time has helped me to conduct all surveys and interviews in less than a week.
Facilitating workshops isn't as scary as it seems! This was the very first ideation workshop that I created and led from start to finish, and naturally, I was a little nervous to start with. However, the workshop ended up being a great success - our in-depth research helped to really focus on the problem we are trying to solve, and come up with solutions always keeping our users needs in mind.
Next Steps
Our research and ideation session yielded some great insights which fueled the future roadmap for Hutch. Although the plans for the Hutch marketplace are ambitious, I believe that putting our users - both the independent businesses and the customers - front and center of our product will help Hutch stand out and succeed.
The immediate next step for Hutch is to launch a web app that includes the key features we've ideated and prioritised during this project. You can follow Hutch on Instagram to get notified on the launch - which should be coming up very soon.
