An app designed for "Avivi Kitchens" company to help homeowners reduce the stress and uncertainty that often comes when buying a new kitchen.
The kitchen is probably the single most-used room of our house. Remodeling or buying a new kitchen can be a stressful task with many decisions to be made.
Our main goal when designing this app was to help Avivi kitchens remove unnecessary stress and uncertainty off their client's kitchen buying experience, trying to reframe this entire process by adding transparency and presenting a newer and more appealing narrative of it towards potential clients.
Avivi Kitchens have over 50 (!) years of experience. For us it means over 50 years of beautiful data we can use. The company's current sales funnel for potential clients is being tested and optimized constantly for years while taking into consideration 3 main factors - the client's needs, the company's business goals and the complex logistics of the different teams responsible for a kitchen to be successfully completed - front desk people, sales, business department, designers, factory workers, QA teams, the delivery chain and technicians. Our first mission was to clearly understand the existing customer flow beginning with a client entering the sales funnel so we can find our main focus point on where we can bring the most value for the customer.
In order to reduce time-to-market and keep a first move advantage ("Avivi" is the first kitchen company to release this kind of product to the market) I decided to conduct stakeholders interviews with "Avivi's" super-engaged team to help establish the foundations of our MVP and better understand where we should put more focus and resources. Conducting those interviews also helped us recruit some of the most influencing people at the company to the upcoming changes and bring a corporative spirit the employees involved in the upcoming changes.
“ Since the beginning Avivi had two guiding principles - One is creating a high quality product and two is maintaining the best customer experience in the market. We want this app to help us obtain and optimize those two principles. "
"It is important to prioritize the changes we're planning to make that might effect our internal work methods, to make sure we won't interrupt the current workflow of our different departments and the ongoing supply chain."
"We can see that once the customer loses the ongoing communication and connection with the designer, anxiety and insecurities rise up and the trust based relationship we've worked so hard to build, becomes shaky. "
"We are not trying sell our customers that there won't be any issues with their order from us because everyone knows there probably will be. All we want the customer to know is that what ever problems might come up, we are 100% committed to solving them."
Based on our targeted audience, I talked to 5 women between the ages of 30-40 who purchased a kitchen from Avivi in the past 3 years. My main goal conducting those interviews was to get a clearer picture of how was their customer experience, what were their main worries and what was missing in order to make it better. Below are 2 selected quotes from those interviews that draw us a clear line on the main paint point.
After gaining insights from talking to potential users and stakeholders, I've built an empathy map to gain a common understanding on what user needs we should focus on solving first on our MVP version. The map we assembled emphasized the user's strong need for security, transparency and validation during the purchase process.
When buying a new kitchen there are a lot of documents involved. We should help users organize all their documents and offer them quick access and sharing option
The process of buying a new kitchen can be overwhelming. We should find a way to reframe the process into a more user-friendly, easy to understand narrative
We can help reduce customer anxiety by providing short, helpful and easy to understand information on each phase, focusing on a more eye level tone of voice
There are face-to-face meetings involved in the process between the customer and Avivi's team. We can remind the user those meetings taking place by adding the details on the app
On their first meeting with the designer, customers personally receive an access code from them to start using the app. In order to create that "we've been waiting for you" feeling when the user first enters the app, we should add the designer's details for a more "familiar face" and warm welcoming
If tracking our food orders became a standard nowadays, why can't we track out kitchen orders?! We should design a simple way for the user to always be on track with their kitchen order
Our MVP is primary for clients who already confirmed an order and are registered on the CRM system. Those clients get introduced with the app personally on their first meeting with their designer which gives them an entry code and makes a short introduction with the app. Considering the face that a big marketing campaign will accompany the launch, we decided to also give access to potential customers or anyone who is curious the chance to get a glimpse on how things work in Avivi.
With this in mind, I designed a short "showoff" section with a few options to show Avivi's expertise, their impressive factory and the whole new "Smart Kitchen" concept Avivi has for the company's future plans.
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Adding carefully designed notifications that are both engaging and informative but not too pushy and annoying, helped us guide users throughout their customer journey and notify them when hitting important milestones in the process. Below are examples of notifications the user receives on 2 important touch points - when the kitchen plans finished the QA review successfully (which means the kitchen can now enter manufacturing) and 2 weeks before the kitchen is ready in order to schedule the delivery date.
While writing this case study, Avivi's app is soon to launch. Our main focus on the next version is to optimize integrations within the app and gain data from customers completing the progress within the app when first making their kitchen order and until the kitchen is at their home.