Making an online community the go-to source of information for owners and fans of the ID.Buzz
ID.Buzz Community
Role
Product Designer
Client
Volkswagen Group
Team
2 Product Designers
1 Product Manager
4 Developers
Timeline
9 months
01
Context
Volkswagen wants to increase the popularity of the ID.Buzz van, and create a bigger community between fans.
Business Problems
They had already tried to create an ID.Buzz Community, but it had a lot of issues:
01
Engagement on the existing platform was extremely low.
02
Difficulty in providing quality content due to platform limitations.
03
The web app was not mobile friendly.
Business Goals
& Opportunities
02
We started by doing a workshop with the stakeholders and product team to understand the goals of the product:
Create a community
of ID Buzz passionate early adopters;
1
2
Attract leads of potential future customers;
Increase sales of the ID.Buzz with the help of this community;
3
Engage with existing owners to generate more buzz around the model;
4
Advocating for User Research
03
Previously marketing research had been completed and the feature requirements had been scoped.
But the research had a focus on marketing content, instead of product and did not validate the proposed solution.
-
We advocated to the business to do further user research to better understand the why behind the need for community.
-
By explaining what we still needed to find out:
Is there really a need for an exclusive ID.Buzz community?
Are all the required features needed for the MVP?
Is there a need for a native mobile app?
The Result
Our stakeholders understood why more research was necessary, and gave their total support for any additional resources we might need for the interviews.
This shift in mindset improved immensely our collaboration.
There are so many community websites out there, like Reddit and Facebook.
But Still…
Do we really need a new community built from scratch?
We conducted a technical research study to discover how best to implement the community. We proposed 2 off-the-shelf solutions as the most cost-effective and efficient solution to the business, versus a custom-build solution.
However, due to limitations of features available, and control over the user database, they opted for a custom build.
User Interviews
O4
We conducted a benchmark analysis of existing ID.Buzz communities and identified potential user interviewees ranging from top community contributors to administrators.
Interviews
11
42-70
Years Old
5
Locations
We discovered WHY they were creating communities:
But there are a lot of problems with order delays, poor communication and disappointment with performance of the Buzz.
People love the ID.Buzz
So they created their own solutions to help each other and get relevant information about the ID.Buzz.
And we discovered WHAT they really need:
-
People want a centralized place for press releases, exclusive content, and all technical information, instead of searching for information on different websites.
-
There is a need, not only for a content moderator, but also for direct contact with Volkswagen technical experts to answer questions and build trust in the community.
-
Users will only be in a community if there is a lively exchange. Community administrators should encourage interaction with polls, quizzes, competitions, etc.
-
Users have problems finding relevant information by going through different posts. A well-organized navigation structure with categories, groups, and universal search is essential.
Ideation
05
We kick-off the ideation phase by facilitating a collaborative workshop with our team and stakeholders.
We presented the research findings, co-created the end-user personas, and brainstormed together on how we could solve the main user problems in the form of Jobs to Be Done.
Prioritization
With these insights in hand, we decided to solutionize by focusing on the end-user personas, and only after on the community moderator.
We managed to narrow down the feature list to the absolute essentials, and prioritize what we planned to build for the MVP.
Prototype
06
Homefeed
How Might We Foster a lively community exchange?
We focused on designing features that encourage interaction and cater to content creation such as: creating posts, adding images, adding comments, replying to comments, and reacting to posts.
Explore
How Might We Enable users to find relevant information easily and quickly?
We added universal search, content categories, groups to follow specific topics, and an explore page to discover new content.
Profile
How Might We Make an interesting user profile to foster exchange?
The community should be open to both owners and fans of the ID.Buzz. Labels should be added to profiles according to types of users: owners and fans; community administrators and top contributors.
It should provide fields for more detailed information such as location, interests, and car model.
Moderation
How Might We Enable content moderators to provide exclusive content and spark discussion?
We created a dashboard for content moderators to manage the community, review reported posts, and block offensive content.
We also aligned with the marketing team to have a VW technical expert answering questions directly on the community, on the regularity of exclusive content, and how to synchronize press releases.
We decided to test the MVP early with users to get feedback on the basic functionality of the app.
We received some detailed feedback from the tests related to app functionality, expected behavior and layout.
With a NPS score of 25, there is still room for improvement.
07
Usability Tests
System Usability Scale
81.88
0 to 100
NPS Score
25
-100 to 100
Next Steps
01
Iterate designs according to usability test results;
02
Define and implement product metrics;
03
Focus on other user groups: administrator and logged-out user;
07
Key Outcomes
-
As a result of our research efforts we managed to change the mindset and gain the trust of our business stakeholders to let us focus on creating a user-centred product.
-
We took complete ownership of product design which had previously been an agency responsibility.
-
We collaborated with the design system team on improvements and new components to the library.
-
We also caused a shift in the perception of our tech unit from a software delivery to a strategic product partner creating further opportunities with VW Commercial Vehicles.
← DPM
Contacts →