Fundamental Research.

User Segmentation.

Youtility

Business Strategy.

Youtility is a Web 3.0 fintech startup in its product development phase. Its mission is to build a cross-store shopping loyalty platform that features rewards in both flat and cryptocurrency. I worked as a researcher to help understand potential users and inform current business strategies.

My Roles & Contributions \

Along with 3 other researchers, I conducted fundamental research for Youtility, including defining research goals, creating research plans, conducting interviews, producing deliverable materials, presenting results, and giving actionable recommendations.

Research Problems \

Identify and understand potential user groups

1

Provide insights on current business strategies

2

Challenges \

The stakeholders have expressed interest in multiple research topics that are not under the same research level.
There is a tight and fixed deadline of three months, and it falls during a holiday period.

How might we maximize the impact on the product and the business with a tight timeline and various research topics?

Defining Research Problems

01. Initial Stakeholder requests

What were the initial research objectives set by our stakeholders?

Understanding target audience
Understanding different shopping journeys
Finding design opportunities
The intersection between current web3 users and potential Youtility users.
Understand current players in the market and how are we competitive

Given a 3-month time constraint, a team of 4 researchers, and limited incentives, we cannot guarantee completion of all tasks while ensuring sufficient impact. What should we do?

02. Product & Business Understanding

We started with acquiring insights into product and current business status through stakeholder interview

Product Stage \

In Development

Value Proposition \

Cross-store shopping loyalty program
Users can connect to their Web3 wallet and receive cryptocurrency as rewards
Decentralized C2B Discord community

Target Audience \

GenZ and Millennials shoppers who uses loyalty programs

Current Business & Product Goals \

B2C
Figure out ways to attract Web2.0 loyalty program users and onboard them to Web3.0
Start on the fundraising and design of the Discord community.

Previous Researches \

Target audience validation; Idea validation;

02. Redefining research goals

We then discussed with Stakeholders which research objective would be most impactful for this business stage

We explained the current situation to stakeholders and informed them that the best course of action is to redefine research objectives.

We asked stakeholders if their current priority was to further validate ideas or to focus on product development, given their prior research on idea validation and topics 4 and 5 are still related to idea validation.

"Product development prioritized over further validation"

̶4̶.̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶s̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶w̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶w̶e̶b̶3̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶o̶t̶e̶n̶t̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶t̶i̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶r̶s̶

̶5̶.̶ ̶U̶n̶d̶e̶r̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶y̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶k̶e̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶t̶i̶t̶i̶v̶e̶

We noticed that although they conducted research on validating the target audience, they did not conduct research to understand the target audience. Therefore, we suggest that before finding design opportunities, we should first gain a deeper understanding of the target audience. This will allow further researches to search for design opportunities that specifically address the audience's needs.

̶3̶.̶ ̶F̶i̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶i̶g̶n̶ ̶o̶p̶p̶o̶r̶t̶u̶n̶i̶t̶i̶e̶s̶

Final Research Objectives

Understand target audience & identify potential users

Potential user segmentation within target audience and understand different user groups

To provide guidance for the research focused on finding design opportunities

1

Target audience's opinions on current product development goals

To guide current product development strategies (Onboard 3.0, Discord Community), so changes can be made in time

2

Research Overview

Research Method

Research Methods We Chose

Screener

To only focus on the target audience.

Data Gathering Survey

Collect further data for user grouping

Screener Criteria

1. Age range: 18-41

2. Make purchases for clothes and food regularly

3. Loyalty program user

4. Web3 interest

5. Regularly use social media

6. Based in North America

1-1 Interview (30-60min)

To understand target audience in depth

7 qualifying participants were interviewed

Limitation: 6 of them were Millennials, and only 1 was GenZ

Unexpected issue

Adjusted research plan due to unforeseen recruitment issues

01

02

Many survey takers qualified for all the other criteria, except for 'Web3 interest'. In order to understand why and inform the current business strategy, we changed the criteria to include participants not interested in Web3 and added questions about understanding the reasons.

Our Youtility loyalty program offers both cash-back and reward settings. Initially, we planned to recruit users of both types. However, the data-gathering survey revealed that only 2 out of 7 qualifying participants used cash-back, while 5 used reward programs exclusively. As a result, we decided to focus our study solely on reward programs.

Research Question Examples

What questions have we planned?

01

02

03

04

Discover users’ motivation and expectations using loyalty(reward) programs

Why do users use the programs while shopping?
What do they wish to see in the programs that are not offered yet?

Understand users’ thoughts and feelings

What do they feel and think about the loyalty(reward) programs?
How did their thoughts and feelings change throughout the shopping experience using the program?

Understand users’ frustration with the programs

Identify any pain points when interacting with the loyalty(reward) programs
Are there any barriers when trying to share and receive shopping-related information in social media communities?

Determine factors influencing their shopping behaviors

Has the program influenced their shopping behavior?
Has the social media community influenced how they shop?
How do people feel about web3?

Results

Personas

Target audience segmentation and their traits to locate potential user groups

✅ Potential User Group

✅ Potential User Group

❓ Not prioritized / Further Research

User Journey

Differences in loyalty program usage between 2 potential user groups

To better understand the differences in how two potential user groups use loyalty programs, we created user journeys for each group. By analyzing the results, we found that the timing and shopping outcomes of loyalty program usage differed between the two groups.

Recommendations

Designers can use this information to create user experiences that align with the habits and expectations of each group.

Other findings & recommendations (Examples)

Next Steps

For potential user segmentation and understanding :

Because we didn't get enough GenZ participants - Conduct another research focusing on GenZ, in order to validate the segmentation and to further understand the user groups

For business strategy :

1. Because we didn't get enough Discord users - Conduct targeted research on Discord users, in order to to find out if it's feasible to develop a shopping community in Discord, and if so, what the ideal methods to include it in their shopping journeys.

2. In order to have more detailed recommendations on how to make Web3.0 onboarding an easier process - Conduct additional qualitative research to pinpoint the gap in knowledge in web3 and cryptocurrency for users transitioning from web2.0

Impact

Product & Business Impact

We identified and provided an understanding of 2 personas, Bargain Hunter and Value Shopper, who are likely to be the potential user groups that Youtility can use to create a unique user experience that meets their various needs.

Our research uncovered that potential users' hesitation to use web3 is mainly due to the high risk and difficult learning curve. When devising a strategy for onboarding Web 2.0 users to Web 3.0, the company can explore various design, marketing, and other strategies to overcome these challenges.

We have found that some potential users of the Youtility loyalty program may not be interested in joining the Discord shopping community due to their lack of familiarity with the Discord platform and the concept of a Discord shopping community. We have advised stakeholders that, if the idea and design have not been thoroughly validated, it would be best to deprioritize the development of the community at this stage and conduct additional research to ensure that the idea is attractive enough to potential Youtility users.

Our analysis has provided insights into the prioritization of business focus areas, enabling the company to optimize resource allocation and cost-effectiveness.