Mango Lakay
Bringing together national, cultural, and brand identities to foster a sense of community on a non-profit platform.
Client
Association of Haitian Professionals
Year
2021
Role
UX Researcher
Platform
Web
Project Summary
The United States is home to the largest Haitian migrant population in the world, an estimated 1 million persons of Haitian descent. In November 2020, the Association of Haitian Professionals (AHP) created Mango Lakay (ML), an online directory of Haitian-owned businesses, because they recognized the need for a centralized platform to support the economic prosperity of their community. ML’s mission is to bring vendors and consumers together, provide benefits to consumers and foster a loyal customer base for the businesses. They want to create a market demand for the creative and entrepreneurial spirit that comes naturally to Haitians, enabling the people to monetize them.
Beyond being a directory for vendors, ML’s vision is to host events that promote Haitian businesses showcasing their talents. Eventually, ML also aims to facilitate Haitian-owned business-to-business connections and collaborations. Additionally, AHP hopes to use ML as a Haitian-owned business incubator by helping new businesses secure funding and by catalyzing their investment process.
Study Focus
The first step in this project was to form a series of research questions and problem statements. To understand AHP’s, Mango Lakay’s, and other stakeholders’ goals, we conducted a semi-structured interview with 7 board members and leaders of AHP and ML. From the initial interview, we learned that the absence of interactive and communicative features may be preventing meaningful exchanges and relationship-building between vendors and customers. Currently, vendors are only able to utilize a vendor portal to create their listings but are incapable of interacting directly with customers. When customers encounter intriguing vendor listings, instead of fostering participation and engagement with the platform, ML redirects users to the vendor website. Therefore, we aimed to investigate how the Mango Lakay platform builds and facilitates a sense of community among vendors and customers. In doing so, we addressed the following research questions:
Research Question 1:
How do ML vendors join the platform? What attracts them? What retains them?
Research Question 2:
What features of the ML platform have contributed to vendor growth and retention?
Research Question 3:
How can the ML platform bolster the community's sense of Haitian identity and pride between vendors and customers?
Research Question 4:
How can we improve the “Events” feature to offer a direct outlet for vendors to engage and serve ML’s Haitian community?
User Research Sources
Our research group aimed at having a broad range of users to help us develop a better understanding of ML’s current challenges. ML provided us with the contact information of 5 vendors (4 current members and 1 ex-member) that we contacted and subsequently interviewed. With these 5 vendors to test from, we were able to get an idea of who the ML vendors are, and gain their insight following the research questions we established.
Methods
Interviews
5 Vendors and 2 Mango Lakay members
Conducted over phone and Zoom
To discover
How do vendors currently engage with the Mango Lakay website?
What are the constraints and resources that the Mango Lakay team works with?
Google Analytics
Insights
How customers and vendors discover Mango Lakay events.
Email blasts improved customer engagement.
Models
Affinity Maps
To better analyze the data we collected through the interviews, we created two Affinity Diagrams - one from the perspective of Mango Lakay vendors and one from Mango Lakay’s own perspective. Our approach in creating the Affinity notes was the following:
Step 1. The participants from the interpretation session collectively suggested potential first-level (i.e., yellow) notes based on the interview. Once these notes were discussed and finalized they were added to the virtual diagram hosted on miro.
Step 2. After completing all interviews, our team members took turns categorizing the yellow notes into second-level notes (i.e, blue). This process of categorizing was done through multiple levels of interaction on the virtual diagram. The iteration initially was done collectively as a group to create the first draft. Following that, 2 members performed individual revisions
Step 3. The same process in (2) was followed for the third-level (i.e, pink) and final-level (i.e, green) notes. Our goal with the green notes was to provide a comprehensive, and abstract overview of our key findings from the qualitative data collected through interviews.
Maps From Mango Lakay Vendor Interviews
Maps From AHP Staff Interviews
Identity Model
After distilling the data we collected through user interviews into affinity diagrams, we created an identity model to further understand ML’s user’s needs. The identity model was created to showcase who vendors are, what they need, and what they want. It was important to make this apparent through a model because we believe that all 3 sections are critical to pointing out potential features that vendors could benefit from and also for discovering points of tension between the user and the platform.
Persona
To create our persona, we went back to the notes on our affinity diagram and worked out common themes across the vendors we interviewed based on their goals, frustrations, and values. It should be noted that one persona can’t justify all of the vendors we interviewed, let alone all the vendors on the Mango Lakay platform, but we were able to identify enough common elements to be able to satisfactorily say that if we keep this persona in mind while thinking of potential design ideas, we would be covering the needs of a significant user base.
Journey Map
Using the persona we created, we set about mapping how a specific vendor (containing the core traits of ML vendors in general) would go about finding ways to target a Haitian demographic of customers online. We discovered through our research that this user would go through a five-stage process, ultimately ending in a decision being made about whether or not to stay on the Mango Lakay platform.
During this process, the vendor experiences an initial positive emotional trend (excitement) upon discovering Mango Lakay as one of the best ways to target the Haitian demographic. However, we discovered that upon spending some time on the platform (usually a couple of months or so), the vendor experienced a downward trend (disappointment ) in their emotional state tied to a multitude of pain points. This ultimately culminates in them realizing a lack of return on investment.
By analyzing the negative pain points discovered in the journey map we were able to discover certain opportunities that Mango Lakay can take advantage of. All of these listed opportunities work to enhance the vendor experience by giving them more places and time to generate profit while still keeping true to the identity and resources of Mango Lakay.
Key Findings
Lack of Community Engagement
“I refrain from using ML because I cannot directly interact with customers and vendors"
Although ML has an established business directory, vendors feel the online platform does not support community engagement.
In-Person Events
"I attend events in the Haitian community outside of AHP."
Vendors highly value being able to attend in-person events. These events serve to both further their businesses’ marketing and sales goals while also allowing vendors to increase their community engagement.
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Product Concepts
Design Vision 1: Vendor Subscription Feed
For the vendor subscription feed solution, we wanted to implement features that could help vendors engage with customers. By including the ability for vendors to post updates with or without images or videos, it can help make them feel more inviting and personal to potential and current customers. In addition, giving vendors the ability to limit who is able to view their posts can give them a sense of control, and enable them to give special attention to their current customers.
Finally, giving new and existing customers the ability to subscribe to vendors can give them a chance to stay updated on the vendor’s activities and learn about their upcoming events and promotions.
Design Vision 2: Vendor Event Creation
For the vendor event creation solution, we wanted to reduce the workload ML has when working with vendors. By enabling them to create their own events, there is minimal work required from ML to let vendors promote themselves through their events. In addition, giving control to vendors to create events can help foster a sense of community with their current and potential customers, as events themselves provide opportunities to connect directly with customers. Apart from fostering customer relationships, vendors can also collaborate with other vendors by creating shared events that can help them gain new customers, and bolster their sense of community pride.
