1 - The start of the project
2 - Two full days of UX
3 - While waiting for the next steps...
1 - The start of the project
A department and a brand -
The Lot department offers all the arguments to attract certain city dwellers who wish to move away from big cities: nature, cultural and community life, professional opportunities, affordable real estate...
However, the department faces an aging population and difficulty attracting new residents. The Departmental Council has initiated a territorial marketing approach aiming to attract new inhabitants, support them as they settle, and encourage young people from Lot to stay or return to live in the region. This approach has led to the creation of a collective brand called "OH MY LOT" (www.oh-my-lot.fr) that brings together many local stakeholders and partners.
The "choisir le Lot" project
Continuing this approach, the department wants to set up an attractiveness site "choisir le Lot" (choose Lot) that would both entice and provide concrete support for future potential residents. For this project, the department had already accomplished the following before contacting our agency:
- A UX benchmark;
- Two interviews with newcomers;
- Two wireframes.
The project leaders then called on our team for support with a UX approach (for more information on our approach, check our article on UX Design and our dedicated page).
2- Two full days of UX
After a 6-hour train ride from Marseille, I set down my bags in Cahors (Lot’s capital) for two intensive days of UX workshops!
Day 1
Morning: Proto-persona workshop
Staying true to our agency’s approach, I start the day by meeting departmental staff and some partners. This first contact allows me to get familiar with the project, discover everyone’s expectations, understand each person’s roles, and explain my own.
Time for the first workshop: defining target users. We start with a Brainwriting session in three phases:
- Idea generation individually to determine who the target users are;
- Pooling and grouping similar ideas;
- Prioritizing the ideas.
After prioritizing the target users, we tackle the second part of the workshop: completing the proto-persona sheets. We imagine a typical user, their needs, their characteristics, etc.
By late morning, we had identified 6 main target users: "The nature lover," "the entrepreneur/project leader," "the person who got a job in the Lot," "the person who doesn’t know the Lot," "tourists who fell in love with the region," "the student/young person".
Afternoon: The Focus Group
The second half of the day is devoted to a group interview with 7 people who recently settled in the Lot Department, of different ages and socio-professional backgrounds.
To start the workshop, I explain the Focus Group rules to the participants and let them know the session will be divided into 3 discussion topics:
- The image of Lot;
- Living/settling in Lot;
- The future website.
I then ask the participants to introduce themselves one by one and to explain, in a single sentence, what the Lot department means to them. The topic-based discussion then begins.
The image of Lot - Photos of Lot are available to help spark conversation among participants. I also steer the debate towards the advantages and disadvantages of the department by inviting the participants to individually complete sentences before discussing them with the group.
Living/settling in Lot - Participants discuss the profiles likely to settle in Lot. To help, I display the QQOCCP (Who, What, Where, When, How, How Much, Why?) on screen. Conversely, participants are then asked to think about what might discourage settlement or motivate people to leave.
The future website - Finally, participants imagine what they would like from the future website. The discussion then turns to what elements users would like to find on the future "choisir le Lot" website.
The first workshop day ends with this 3-hour focus group, which helped complete the personas and obtain/validate information on future users’ needs.
Some key takeaways from this focus group:
- There are lots of activities in Lot, and people have time to enjoy them;
- It’s difficult to find a place to rent (accommodation or business premises);
- It’s important to have real testimonials from residents;
- There’s a need to find job and housing offers.
Day 2
Morning: User journey workshop
We begin creating user journeys based on the personas. Each persona is studied. We consider their goals, their future website journey, pain points, etc. We then map this out as an experience map.
Key points from the workshop:
- Users looking for jobs or housing won’t always use the attractiveness website but will go to specialist sites… or the site of a specific municipality.
- It’s therefore important for towns and partners to link back to the attractiveness site. In turn, the site should promote links to specialist sites and serve as an informative "showcase" for visitors.
- The site must also describe the Lot Department, its activities, life there, opportunities, etc. And it should foster connections with local contacts who can answer questions and guide website visitors.
Afternoon: The Crazy 8 (Design Studio)
More people join for this final half-day session (around 15 people including partners and departmental staff). So we start by breaking into 4 groups, each with at least one person who attended all the workshops.
Once the groups are formed, the workshop begins: time for the Crazy 8!
The crazy 8 is an ideation method from the Design Sprint developed by Jake Knapp at Google Ventures. This workshop turns abstract ideas into solutions with the motto: “Work alone together!”
Once the problem and rules are explained, I invite participants to start with their own personal reflection. Everyone moves around the room, where I have posted up personas, journeys, a focus group summary, examples of attractiveness websites, and images of the department. The goal is for the participants to draw inspiration and find ideas for the next phase.
After 15-20 minutes, it’s time for phase 2: drawing! Participants have 8 minutes to individually sketch 8 solutions (hence the name crazy 8). Each participant then presents their sketches to their group, after which the group votes. The most popular ideas are refined collectively. Finally, each group presents their results to everyone.
This co-design workshop combined with the others gives me a solid basis for planning user journeys. So I leave the Lot Department with lots of ideas for the next steps!
3- While waiting for the next steps...
Back at the agency, I started creating the first wireframes for the future website. This work is still ongoing. We’ll then continue with the UI design phase, user tests, and the development of the future site.
Understand, imagine, design, test, and repeat... that’s how you make sure your project succeeds!
See you soon for more on this experience,
Alexandre Pons UX Researcher - UX Designer
