cannapages
An online directory and digest that offers listings for cannabis dispensaries and related businesses. It aims to provide crowd sourced reviews, online advertising and e-commerce tools in addition to a wealth of information about cannabis and cannabis products.
client
cannapages
agency
Camber Creative
timeline
2020 – 2021, 8 months
key goals
To improve overall functionality and user friendliness in comparison to competitors. Additionally, discover new revenue streams that can be utilized and maximize those opportunities. There is a strong desire to expand on the platform's core tenets: to search, to inform, to learn, and commerce.
how it started
Upon joining the agency as their new Product Designer,
I inherited this project for which I was tasked with quickly learning about the client and their project needs in order to produce results quickly. As there had been little to no previous formal user research, I decided to leverage information from similar projects, competitors and learn what assumptions & challenges my client was had to efficiently move forward with building the project
assumptions
assumptions
assumptions
challenges
challenges
opportunities
opportunities
solutions
solutions
process
The ideas presented only constitute a portion of the findings obtained through discussions and research. Utilizing the insights obtained during the research phase, we formulated a list of user stories which served as the foundation for creating actionable tasks and feature sets for our development team to build a minimal viable product that would satisfy the basic needs of people using the platform.
These tasks and features were then organized and prioritized into a roadmap for implementation. With the user stories in place, I constructed a series of user flows that mapped out all of the interactions that could occur on the platform.
Then, they were validated and approved by the Product Owner(s) and served as the basis for designing the various views on the platform. The views were then built into prototypes that were validated internally and then presented to the client on a weekly basis before they handed off to development.
prototype
i. main page
ii. search
iii. inform
iv. learn
v. commerce
outcomes
This project ultimately ended in failure. There were several challenges that arose during the project, but they were not adequately addressed or prioritized on a technical level. As a result, we were unable to meet the deadlines or milestones that were discussed with the client, and this ultimately led to the dissolution of the relationship between them and Camber Creative. One of the major obstacles we faced was determining the appropriate data architecture and identifying the best sources for the content that would be featured on the platform. The decision of whether to scrape data from the internet or rely on organic user-generated content was particularly challenging. This made validating certain areas of the platform almost impossible because we never settled on how data was going to be handled.
Some Takeaways:
- Conduct thorough research and gain a comprehensive understanding of the project scope before starting.
- Set realistic expectations and establish clear goals to avoid future compromises when building a platform of this magnitude.
- Remember that disagreements are a natural part of the process, so communicate effectively and educate your client on proper process and procedures.
- Keep in mind that certain tasks may require more time to complete correctly and should not be rushed to meet deadlines.
Selected Works
Sweet.io (2017)Product Design
Sweet MarketplaceProject type
