Brief: To identify a business to explore the complex societal problems to create a meaningful, transformative, and sustainable service design solution.
Team role: My role was mainly organising the project along with managing a team of 5. I was highly involved in ideation & development.
Outcome: A mobile application ‘Elo’ that creates a seamless support network for small businesses to sustain & thrive in a 15 minute neighbourhood.
Design process
Core Ingredients (from current service)
They have a diverse range of products sourced within the country and produced using eco-friendly materials and techniques.
%201_edited.png)
Findings : Secondary Research
“Shepshed is changing; its dying. We are becoming nothing more than a dormitory town. There is nothing here for locals, no jobs, no shops.” - Shepshed resident
-
0.34 jobs per resident lower than the national average 0.45
-
77.8% of shepshed residents commute by car or motorcycle
Key personas
Small business owner
Sarah | Age 34
Creates her products at home. Usually works late nights once the children are asleep
Pain points : Juggling tasks, disturbed work-life balance, lack of resources to expand
Conscious consumer
Albert | Age 28
Nature-lover, enjoys hiking and travelling on weekends and holidays.
Pain points : Busy lifestyle, lack of feedback on sustainable behaviours, access to products
Findings : Primary Research
Participant recruitment > Semi-structured interviews > Participant observation > Analysis (affinity mapping)
Conscious consumers
“Always like to shop local where possible, its good and well saying ‘eco-friendly’ on the bottle but then have it shipped from new zealand."
- Mother of two
"It would help surface some new businesses that maybe a little outside the town centre"
- Female single professional living alone
Small business owners
"With delivery outsourced, I can focus on my instore customers and talking to them, building relationships"
- Flower & gift shop owner
“Building a website was too much work so we stopped. We would like one though. We get a lot of people looking for a website we don't have”
- Delicatessen owner
Concept development
Guilt free self-care products for people to keep up with the busy lifestyles.
A service that consolidates all eco-friendly local products in one place and delivers using universal containers and a drone delivery system.
Eco-friendly distribution service that increases access to local products and promotes greener practice within a 15-minute neighbourhood.
Value proposition
Our eco friendly distribution service helps environmentally conscious people who want to actively reduce impact on planet by removing inconvenience of discovering access to eco-friendly products and increasing access to sustainable local products and application knowledge.
Prototyping with objects
Understood the complexities of certain actions and made changes by moving things around the board.
Storyboard: eco-conscious user
User testing (small business owners)
Key learnings :
​
Having the delivery person collect multiple orders at one time is inefficient.
​
Collecting orders during the day is not desirable by the business owners
Storyboard: small business owner
Key pivots
Focus on small business owners
Initially focused on consumers, we shifted to prioritizing small business owners, uncovering their challenges with online presence and delivery systems, which became the core of our service.
Value of zooming out
Shifting our focus from minor details to the bigger picture, we developed three core elements—Discover, Connect, and Support. This shift from micro to macro clarified how our service integrates into a 15-minute neighborhood.
Physical presence
We shifted from a physical store to transitional warehouse, this would help the small businesses retain their in-store customers while having an online presence, ensuring good customer relationships.
Updated delivery timing
Consumers are willing to wait longer for environmentally-friendly options, while small business owners prefer consolidated end-of-day order collections to maintain better in-store relationships.
Final outcome
Our vision is to build a network for the local businesses that would help them sustain and thrive in their 15-minute neighbourhood. The idea is to encourage shopping local to create a positive environmental impact. The aim is to create strong connections between people andlocal businesses in a area making it self-reliant and resilient.
‘Elo’ sits in the centre of the 15-minute neighbourhood... Creating frictionless interation between the consumer and small businesses, leading to continuous transfer of value within ecosystem where it exists.
Key features
Try it before you buy it
Elo helps in creating visibility for their products through the ‘try it box', comes at low price and contains samples of different products that the area has to offer.
Know your area better
Hand held overview of the offerings of the local area, creating initial awareness helps people to further engage and build connections with local businesses.
Building relationships
All the orders are collected and distributed by elo, making it easy for the businesses to connect to their customers, fostering valuable relationships.
Feedback & improvement
Helps the customers in supporting their favourite local businesses by allowing them to leave feedback on their favourite brands that help brands improve.
Eco- score suggestions
Our network encourages them to be more eco-friendly through the eco-score, by guiding them on different aspects such as manufacturing & packaging.
_edited.png){kind=small}
Maintainance
Small businesses struggle to maintain online presence as it is expensive and time consuming. elo relieves them of this stress by providing a unique space for their brand.
User flow (conscious consumer)
User flow (business owner)
App screens
Value framework
-
Level playing field for all local businesses.
-
Elo helps in creating visibility for their products through the ‘try it box’.
-
Outsourced delivery system and specified collection time ensures good in-store customer relationships.
Revenue model
No Sale, No fee
Only if the small business owners generate revenue on the platform, they will be ask to pay a fee.
Scalable sales fee
Fee % is based on the size of the business as it is unfair to charge large amounts from small businesses.
Rent a shelf
Small business owners can choose to rent a shelf & store products in the transitional warehouse.
Bigger impacts
