Tin Cup:
Cornell Tech x Samsung Electronics Project
Tin Cup: Cornell Tech x Samsung Electronics project is a digital platform where users can find demonstrators* who provide a hands-on experience and genuine reviews of electronic niche products. I worked with master’s students at Cornell Tech for a collaboration project with Samsung Electronics America. We focused on blending the traditional brick and mortar purchasing experience with a digital retail experience. My role included: Industry/user research, prototyping, visual design, user experience design, front-end coding, and demo.
*A term used in this particular app to define owners of electronics who are available for providing hands-on experience and honest feedback.
Role
Timeline
Interaction Design,
Visual Design,
User Research,
2D/3D Prototyping
4 months,
Cornell Tech Product Studio 2020
Tools Used
Figma,
Principle,
After Effects,
HTML, JavaScript
Demo
This video presents the walk-through of the app, Tin Cup.
Project Objectives
“How might we blend the traditional brick and mortar purchasing experience of consumer electronics with a digital retail experience?”Consumers lack an integrated tool to efficiently make purchasing decisions. Each of them spend so much time going back and forth from online stores to physical stores for product research and comparison.
Our team intended to focus on creating a seamless transition between online and offline stores by providing a digital platform where the users could easily search for products, meet with the demonstrators in real life, and make better purchasing decisions based on the product demonstrations. The main features for the initial iteration of the app allow the users to 1) search for products and 2) connect with the demonstrators.
Users choose a specific location from the map to build their gardens.
User & Industry Research
To research the pain points and the shopping process of customers, I conducted several interviews. Furthermore, to identify the main relationships in the consumer electronics industry, I conducted online research on the industry. I created a diagram to visualize the information we found from the research. Currently, a lot of consumers are interested in purchasing electronic niche products. They could 1) rely on Youtube videos that test the products or 2) visit a physical retail store and get the product information from a salesperson who is mostly interested in selling the product. Based on the user and market research, we found that the consumers are interested in getting hands-on experience and honest reviews about the products.
User Flow & Wireframes
After identifying the user flow of the application, I focused on designing an integrated page that efficiently displays the product categories, filters results, and connects the user with a demonstrator. The layout should allow the users to easily find the products they are interested in and connect with the demonstrators near their locations. I decided to use paper prototyping to find the structure that encourages users to select their areas of interests, explore different brands, and find popular products.
Prototyping
I created several prototypes to visualize the user flow and interactions between the pages. I focused on enhancing the user experience by making simple steps for the searching process.
Experiments
For the “Mailchimp experiment,” we sent two separate emails to our target users about the main features of the app and added a subscribe button at the end of the page. Mailchimp is an automation platform for email services and we used this platform to keep track of the number of subscribers. We tried to test the primary purpose of the app and address the needs of the potential users. We sent two different emails one per week to test the user engagement and understand the potential customer base. The first email (Experiment A) is focused on socializing and meeting new people with similar interests, and the second email (Experiment B) is more focused on experiencing new products and making better purchasing decisions.
Experiment A
Experiment B
Findings
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According to Mailchimp reports of the number of subscribers, we got more subscribers from experiment B, which was about making better purchasing decisions based on product demonstrations.
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We were able to narrow down our application: Our focus is not mainly about creating a socializing space but about providing better options for experiencing different products.
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Instead of using customer-to-customer model, we determined to use business-to-consumer business model to give the users more opportunities to experience new products sponsored by different brands.
Redesign
Based on the comments we received from the critiques and user testing, I decided to focus on providing demonstrations for niche products. Initially I included the categories for the widely used consumer electronics, such as laptops and smartphones. However, there is already a lot of opportunities for the consumers to test those electronics. Therefore, I determined to provide a hands-on experience for niche products, such as drones, 3D printers, and smart home devices, which are typically difficult to test within physical stores. In addition, the target users wanted to ‘explore’ through different categories of consumer electronics. Therefore, I decided to add a swiper function with the animated icons that I created to encourage the users to browse through the page.
Moving Forward
Since the product demonstration is based on the meetups in real life, there could be a lot of safety issues. To prevent the problems, we included the rating system in the app so the users could avoid the demonstrators who could potentially cause risks. For the next design iteration, I am planning to implement an automated or manual review system that monitors inappropriate behavior in the chat. In addition, I am expecting to add more categories and products to the homepage to build a broader audience.
