Vancouver Tool Library
Interactive Showcase
CONTEXT
4-month Client Project for a Senior Level Interaction Design Course at Simon Fraser University.
TEAM
Caleb Taylor
Dawood Shafqat
Lucio Chen
MY ROLE
Interaction and Experience Design, Project Management, Strategy, Ethnography & research, Copywriting
TOOLS
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
Premiere
AT A GLANCE
Our team worked with the Vancouver Tool Library (VTL) to understand the needs of the business and their customers to provide a design intervention. The VTL Showcase feature was introduced to enhance new and amateur member’s tool literacy through workshop engagement and projects.
Check out the VTL Showcase concept video below before diving into the case study!
THE CLIENT
Located in East Vancouver, The Vancouver Tool Library is a non-profit cooperative that strives for sustainability through lending out tools instead of selling products. In addition, they also hold tool-related workshops such as woodworking and leatherworking, in which participants leave with a finished product and increased tool literacy.
ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH + INITIAL DESIGN FOCUS
For the first two weeks, our team did thorough ethnographic research to understand the complexity of the organization and witness firsthand a day at the coop. As one of the lead researchers, I spent over ten hours using methods such as on-site visits and observation, note-taking, audio and video recordings and informal interviews with both our client and their customers to help our team paint a clear picture of the motivations, obstacles and needs of the VTL community.
Through conversations and observations, we discovered VTL's goals:
1. Generate interest in tool lending and project making to retain members
2. Self-sustain as a non-profit organization and grow
3. Educate members on how to use the right tools for the job, safely and effectively
To combat extracting key insights from a large quantity of data, we created an affinity map to help organize our findings thematically. These findings then helped us with creating our initial user journey map, through which we narrowed down the three main users - the volunteers and board members, the store members and workshop attendees.
Discovering the motivations behind each user group was essential in guiding us in the right direction. At this point, our team created tangible personas to further aid in our design direction.
Store Member
Workshop Attendee
Store Manager
Store Member
Having completed the ethnographic research, the user journey maps and personas, my team and I arrived at three different design directions:
1. Customer education
Our research artifacts showed that VTL dealt with a lot of beginners. People with the skills and know-how aren’t the people to rent one-off tools for cheap; they either already own them, have access to them, or benefit from buying them new. VTL has limited staff and resources, but they want each customer to feel safe and confident with every tool they rent out. This benefits both parties as VTL is more likely to get their tools back in good condition, and the customer completes their project safely.
2. Outreach, publicity and workshop management
We also discovered that VTL isn’t just Vancouver's tool library- they’re also a great workshop provider. A lot more people deserve to hear about this aspect of the tool library, and the volunteers need a way to manage the growing volume of workshop attendees.
3. Volunteer management.
With such a small staff, VTL relies heavily on the reliability of its volunteers. The library needs to know ahead of time if people can’t make it, who’s scheduled, and what’s planned for the day.
INITIAL INTERVENTIONS
Once we had our initial design focus in mind , my team and I formulated solutions for the interventions that we had diagnosed. With the main focus being to bring more light to the VTL and way to educate the members and ensure rental safety, we proposed three concepts - A tool pamphlet, a publicity video and improved in store signage.
We quickly realized that these concepts were still too broad and did not focus on a clear user group. The tool pamphlet wasn't grounded in any of our personas and lacked specificity and demography. The publicity video solution felt too much like a "quick marketing fix" while the signage solution lacked the room for much design work.
We analyzed our solutions and realized our initial interventions failed because our team played it safe and didn't choose a specific user group to design for. Our proposed solutions were still very broad and didn't dive deep enough to provide a meaningful connection to the ethnography - It seemed we had superficial solutions that would have benefited any organization. Of these three interventions, we felt we saw some potential in the pamphlet concept and so decided to create a tentative new design focus of creating a smooth tool renting experience that ensures the safety of the customer and the condition of the tool for new/amateur users.
PARTICIPATORY WORKSHOP + REGROUPING
At this stage, we went back to the VTL and carried further ethnographic research, as well as designing participatory workshops with the stakeholders to involve them in the design process and get their critical first-person experiences. We felt this would be useful in helping us ground our new design focus. Our workshop consisted of interactive activities that included of drawing, speaking and writing. We drafted questions for the ideal pamphlet and framed activities that would encourage participant perspectives, boost suggestions and brainstorm opportunities. Due to the novel COVID-19 virus, our team had to carry out the participatory workshop remotely at a short notice.
*From this point forward, all of our team collaboration and research transitioned online.
While a virtual workshop had its limitations such as being unable to dive into any visual cues and facial expressions and word-heavy tasks making it difficult to extract clear visual ideas, we gained valuable insight that helped point us in the right direction.
We had two distinct findings; The brochure should include a gallery of projects completed by VTL members using VTL tools, and that we should steer clear of safety instructions unless we explicitly state VTL’s immunity for liability if something were to go wrong, or keep the tips general. With the results from our workshop and additional ethnographic research, our team finally felt we had enough information to narrow down on a specific design focus - Curating a welcoming and informative experience for new and amateur customers to enhance tool literacy
ALMOST THERE
With our new design focus in mind, my team and I finalized two different design concepts which would aid in tool literacy and further VTL's community engagement
The insight into liability issues really helped guide us in designing our first concept. A combination of a disclaimer telling customers that they’re ultimately responsible for their own safety and VTL had no liability if they were to get hurt, and general safety tips that were brought up in the “Five ‘why’s” section would add valuable information without creating legal risk for VTL.
The insight into liability issues really helped guide us in designing our first concept. A combination of a disclaimer telling customers that they’re ultimately responsible for their own safety and VTL had no liability if they were to get hurt, and general safety tips that were brought up in the “Five ‘why’s” section would add valuable information without creating legal risk for VTL.
REFINING + COMBINING
Having presented these two concepts to our client, we ultimately decided that the interactive showcase option aligned with the goals of the Vancouver Tool Library far more than that of a brochure. The brochure felt like a quick-fix, wasn't environmentally friendly and could also pose a legal risk. The showcase, on the other hand, satisfied VTL’s monetary needs while facilitating VTL’s community goals. It was grounded in our research and focused on aiding a specific user group - new and amateur members. It would get more people involved with tools and tool literacy, generate interest in the workshops and encourage positive communication between VTL members. It was also far more of an innovative, creative and sustainable concept.
Showcase Page
REFLECTION
This project was my first introduction to working with a real client as part of an academic course and it really broadened my understanding of interaction and experience design. I really enjoyed the ethnography work and it reinforced the importance of rooting insights in the research. Interviewing the stakeholders and customers not only helped develop my ability to empathize from a design perspective, but it also helped me strengthen the skill of extracting key details. As this project was 12 weeks long, with twists and turns as part of the process, I learnt to embrace failure quickly and move on to new iterations. An initial mistake our team made was jumping to solutions too quickly, instead of trusting the process. Once we began building more trust within ourselves as a team and our insights, our interventions were more firmly rooted and spoke for themselves.