Dove Website - Participatory User Research
- Planning and approach
- Resourcing and hiring of team
- Workshop facilitation
- Insight generation
- UX direction & feedback
- Planning and approach
- Resourcing and hiring of team
- Workshop facilitation
- Insight generation
- UX direction & feedback
How might we re-imagine Doves digital presence to drive purposeful engagement through the power of individual and collective actions.
Dove have recently created a new global strategy to reach a new audience of people who want to make a difference in the world and take action, these people are labelled 'Actionists'. Dove wants to be seen as a partner to help fight against issues like body image, self-confidence, climate change and racial hair discrimination. For this, they needed a new digital presence that represents their purpose and gives their audience a platform to take action. Collaborating with the strategy director, I lead the team incorporating real people directly into the design process to co-create a future vision for the Dove website, which was a huge success with our stakeholders. View the vision film here.
My roleI worked closely with the strategy director to create an approach and plan for the vision of this project. I resourced and hired the right people to ensure we had a diverse mix of strategy, design and tech. My main focus was to lead the team in activities such as workshops, user research and experience work to guide and shape the vision, ensuring we were putting the user at the heart through every step of the way.
Shape of the team- UX Lead (myself)
- Design Lead
- Senior Designer
- Front End Lead
- Programme Manager
- Global Delivery Lead
- Strategy Director
- Associate Creative Director
I ran an opportunities & challenges workshop to help us understand the brief, the challenges, what we know already, and what we don't know, in order to start to narrow down on which areas we wanted to focus on. Some previous work had been done on competitors within the 'purposeful brands' landscape, and some insights had come out of the global strategy to help us start to narrow our efforts.
Some of the initial focus areas included:- How might we introduce the idea of 'actionism' to people?
- How might we trigger the first action?
- How might we create a platform for long term engagement?
- How might we establish Doves beauty credentials?
- How might we bring purpose and product together?
I wanted to incorporate users into the entire process so we used a research method called 'asynchronous qual' (using the Liveminds system) which was a process of generating customer insight through stimulus material, live conversation, feedback, and iterations over a 6-day period. Using 'actionist' audience segments that Dove had created, we recruited 18 users from both the US and UK markets that fit into our criteria for 'Passionate Progressives' 'Authenticity Seeking Gen Z' and the 'The Female Collective'.
The asychronis qual approach allowed us to reach out directly with our audience and formulate questions, show stimuus material and even request videos and drawings from our users.
The research was set up with multiple phases:Day 1
- Introductions - Tell us what do you do in life?
- Tell us about a social cause that you feel particularly passionate about?
- What stops you from getting more involved with social causes?
Days 2-3
- Examples of brands with social purpose (STIMULUS: Examples x3
- Reactions to Dove’s pro-social activity (spontaneous)
- Reactions to Dove’s pro-social activity (prompted STIMULUS)
Days 3-4
- Reactions to Dove’s new ‘Actionism’ direction
- Alternative articulations of actionism
- Rules of engagement
Days 4-5
- Reactions to stimulus concepts
- Stimulus - Becoming an Actionist
- Stimuls - Take part in the action
- Stimuls - Be inspired by real stories
- Stimuls - Arm yourself with eduction
- Stimuls - Make informed choices
- Their ideas and builds
Days 5-6
- Reactions to refined concepts - voting and improving
- Stimulus - Control the funding and the actions
- Stimuls - Untold stories of real beauty
- Stimuls - Find the right products that align to your values
- Stimuls - Dove self-steem classes and tools
- Stimuls - Real women, real dove employees
Throughout the 6 days of research we asked questions around the participants involvement in social causes and their opinions on brands involvement and what purpose driven brands are doing. We then asked them how they feel about Dove being a purpose brand and what their perception of Dove and how they see Dove's involvement is social causes. We then started showing some of the early ideas and stimulus material and asked them what they thought, how they felt and what they would change.
Some of the key audience insightsSocial Causes and brands
- It can be overwhelming, draining and hard to keep involvement up
- How to keep it going in the background while you get on with life
- How to be lightly involved but still respected
Dove Activity
- Dove's body positivity is often a feeling based belief - the evidence depth is lacking in their minds
- When prompted there is an uncertain/vague belief that Dove has a body positivity philosophy
- Challenge of other sites and Why Dove?
Stimulus Responses:
- Being seen to really care what people think - transparently and honestly
- Dove can help people make a difference when they don’t have the time or resources
- Using "Actionist" is a risk, the more cynical or less engaged see through it
- Recognition that Dove has a responsibility but also power. It is what it brings to the table and why they would work "with Dove"
- Power of everyday people not activists and influencers
- Needs to be made tangible and clear - what is the action
- Give participants real and tangible ownership in the campaign - feel like a stakeholder
Once we had enough user data and had started seeing themes and insights coming through, we used those to start creating ideas for the stimulus material. I ran a 'creative matrix' ideation session, which helped broaden our thinking and start going beyond our initial ideas. The structure allowed us to think about the experience from a user perspective wether then are just a visitor, a support, an activist or a leader as well as broaden to the key areas from the brief which included beauty, actionism and editorial.
Some of the initial ideas included:- This is Dove Actionsim - Interactive hub
- Actionist/Community Job Board
- Vlogs from leaders/actionists
- Track your carbon footprint
- Expert influencer programs
- Becoming a brand publisher (Dove Media)
We started exploring the journeys for each of the different personas/segments, looking at their main goals they are there to achieve, and categorising the type of action that persona is likely to take. These actions were categorised into small steps such as reading articles, facts or figures, medium steps such as connecting with others, commenting or voting, and then the large steps such as setting up an initiative or becoming a mentor.
Small actions such as:
- Reading articles
- Viewing facts or figures
- Watching education videos
Medium actions such as:
- Connecting with others
- Commenting or voting
- Downloading material
Large actions such as:
- Setting up an initiative
- Becoming a mentor
- Hosting and event
We started exploring what it would look like to have a set of 'hubs' for each role the website provides such as education, action, publishing, product and editorial. We mapped the hypothesised value to the user and started listing some of the features from the ideation sessions that would be most useful for each journey. These also were iterated upon based on feedback and insights from the user testing happing in sync.
Some of the journeys included:An education hub
- Interactive training modules such as bullying, self-esteem etc
- Masterclass on how to be an actionist
- Warning certificates and leadership badges
An action hub
- Join/support and create petitions, events, polls etc
- Earn votes and rewards
- Become a mentor/be mentored
Creation hub
- Connect with other people and work together
- Discussion panels
- Pitch ideas to get funding from Dove
Product hub
- Interactice quiz product finder to match your beliefs
- Select a cause for Dove to donate to
- Self-care routines and resources
We then used the key features and content to start mapping out the placements for each mock-up. These were done as sticky notes or rough wires in Mural so that we could iterate quickly as more feedback came in from the user testing in collaboration. The design team worked simultaneously as the ideas flowed in, to start mocking up the visuals of what this could look like.
Some of the experience challenges
- How do we create a landing page that encompasses the breadth of the platform?
- How do the journeys tie in together and overlap one another?
- How does the profile logged in state personalise your experience?
- How do we create an education platform within the site?
- How do we keep it fun and engaging, but purpose driven also?
- How do we show the new strategy alignment with the Dove brand?
Throughout the project we developed and iterated on some key experience principles to help guide us through out the UX & design phase. I led these as a way to keep the team focused and ensure we were creating ideas and features that would align to the user needs, and be designed with the user at the heart. For every experience principle we created a feature, function or action that would illustrate that very principle.
Some of the experience principles included- Show me Dove’s credibility
- Make me feel part of something bigger
- Excite and motivate me
- Support me in my journey
- Nurture my identity and interests
- Show me my progress
- Show me how Dove’s products are helping the planet
- Show how my purchase makes an impact
- Let me choose products that align with my needs and values
The final designs/protoypes reflect the experience principles, journeys and action driven features of the new platform which come together nicely. Our wonderful designer created some examples of motion and interaction such as buttons pulsating to encourage action, progress bars increasing to capture attention and imagery fading in and out upon interaction to give the site a really slick, smooth and calm feel to it, to represent Dove's caring presence.
