• Feira Praça da República •
Bringing the traditional market of art and crafts of São Paulo to the digital world!
Feira Praça da República is a web app for the “Associação dos Artistas e Artesãos da Praça da República” (”Association of Artists and Artisans of the República Square” in English), designed for the popular market of the same name, located in São Paulo, Brazil. The web app allows them to expand their borders to reach clients that for any reason can’t physically go to the market, and it offers a simple interface for exhibitors to register their products for online sale.
Project Overview
Task: Design a responsive marketplace for the popular market Feira Praça da República
Challenge: Design a website of simple use for the exhibitors – which are mostly elderly people – to put their products for sale. Make use of the website to encourage people to visit the market in person when the opportunity comes.
My tasks: UX Research, wireframe, prototyping, UI Design
Quick summary:
- The website follows a mix of marketplace and a blog, since the request of the association (and the interviewed exhibitors) was to also use the site as a way to invite people to visit them in person as well
- The product registration page was designed to be very simple to use by the exhibitors, which is primarily consisted by elderly people
- The website opens a new opportunity: people from farther away get the chance to know more about the market – direct from the source, which although is known for some of potential visitors, the information about it is somewhat scarce
My process
Discover!
To better understand the needs of the association, the president of the association was interviewed. According to him, the exhibitors lost a lot of their income during the lockdown of the pandemic of COVID-19 in 2020. Even after two years they still couldn’t recover from the financial damage caused by the pandemic. Because of that, he wanted an idea for a website for them in case another situation like the lockdown in 2020 ever happens again. If that’s the case, they wouldn’t totally lose their main (and sometimes the only) income. The president also said that he doesn’t want the website to replace the market, but instead use it as a way to further help them, including as a way to make more people interested in visiting the market in person.
That was the starting point. We got the most recent research from SEBRAE – social service to help micro and small businesses in Brazil – about the impact of COVID-19 on micro and small businesses to learn deeper about the situation of the craftwork sector. According to the research, that sector lost, on average, about 70% of their income in 2020, the second most impacted compared to all other sectors. Even two years later, they were still making 30% less than the average. With this in mind, some questions emerged: What tools did the exhibitors try to use to make up for the crisis? How did it go? Why did it fail?
Research
The first step was to gather as much information as possible to answer questions regarding the craftwork sector, their clients and motivations, what they tried to overcome the crisis, among many other questions. To do that, the CSD Matrix – a matrix containing certainties, suppositions and doubts – was created. The certainties were already covered with evidence, while the doubts were researched further until getting the answer for most of them.
We got some interesting answers from our secondary research, like the impact and the current recovery of the handicraft sector and successful cases of other institutions in artistic areas that were fully offline and migrated to the internet, without abandoning their offline side.
With the general idea of the handicraft community in mind, the next step is to know more about specifically Feira Praça da República: things that involve the exhibitors and the clients, since they are going to be the user base for the website.
💡 What did we want to know?
- What makes people buy handcrafted products?
- What were the exhibitors’ experiences with online marketplaces? What are their fears regarding online platforms, if any?
- What and how do people feel when they go to this kind of market?
- How popular is Feira Praça da República, and what are the opinions about it?
The last question is answered through secondary research: from the time I looked it up (2022), there were about 1400 reviews on Google, giving it an average score of 4.2, which implies that people like the market. Analyzing the reviews for that place, we could get the general idea for positive and negative points.
👍 Positives
- Very diverse in products and cultural manifestations
- Tasty food from different cultures
- Easy to find, since it’s near a train station
- It’s a tourist attraction
👎 Negatives
- The place lacks security: pickpocketing is fairly common
- The place – a public square – is looking more and more abandoned (lacks proper cleaning)
- People feel bothered by the big amount of beggars roaming around
The other questions can be answered by researching our potential users directly.
Interviews
For this step, we first created two proto personas: the exhibitor of the market and the art and handicraft lover (the potential client). This way, we could plan specific questions for each of our proto personas. After all, it’s very important to specify what kind of people are going to be interviewed, just so you won’t gather data that is not important for the research.
For the exhibitors, we ran a qualitative research, interviewing them in person. They were asked their ages, the time working as an artisan/artist, their solution during the pandemic and their experience selling online, among others. Another point in going to ask them in person, instead of sending them the questions or calling them, is that this was an opportunity to feel their environment and dynamics, in hope to use the physical experience to enhance the product we want to build for them.
For the potential client, we ran a quantitative research, through online forms. I chose it online instead of also being in person because, as I learned from the reviews about the market, Feira Praça da República is a known tourist attraction, and some comments were from people that already knew about the place before ever visiting it. This way I could collect data from people that currently visit and buy products from there and people that wish to, one day, visit the market. They were asked their ages, their motivation to buy handcrafted products, what disencourage them to buy handcrafted products, the kind of products they usually buy, among others.
We compiled all the answers and analyzed them. The results were:
✂ The Exhibitors
- The majority of them are between 50 and 70 years old
- Most of them didn’t have success selling online, having difficulties in advertising themselves and/or using apps (marketplaces and social media for example) for that
- More than 60% of them didn’t know of an online platform that could be good specially for selling their works
- Some of them were afraid of scams when trying to sell their products online
- Some of them complained about online clients not understanding that the handcrafted products will not look exactly the same as in the pictures
- A lot of them like to sell their works in person because they like to interact with people
- 70% of them like the idea of an online platform to help their sales, but they also want it to be a way to advertise the market in general and have information about the crafts and the process of creation
💵 The Potential Clients
- 60% of them are between 22 and 35 years old
- According to them, it’s very important to know the material used for the handwork, due to allergies and things like that
- 70% of them like to go to this kind of market because they can see the handwork in person and get to know other works from them (and other exhibitors)
- There’s not a significative difference in the number of people that buy those things for themselves or buy for someone else
- More than half of the consumers chose to not buy a handicraft work for being more expensive than a industrialized product at least once
- In the other hand, some consumers changed their mind regarding buying a industrialized product instead of a handwork after hearing the (usually) inspiring story of the artisan/artist
Competitive analysis
Since the request was to make a website to support their market and help with sales, we analyzed websites – ecommerces and marketplaces, most of them directly related with handcrafted products (direct competitors). We checked their strong and weak points, and compiled the comparison in a table.
Define!
We gathered a lot of information from the primary and secondary research, so we can define the main pain points and spot the problem, so that we can deliver the best solution for the association. The first part is to highlight important and relevant things we learned from the research.
- The artist and artisan community suffered during the pandemic in general, being the second most impacted sector of all micro and small businesses. Their lack of experience in selling online had a big play on that matter. A lot of them tried to migrate to online platforms during the pandemic, but most of them had no success, some even giving up entirely. One aggravating matter is that most of the exhibitors for the Feira Praça da República are elderly people.
- The association as a whole loves their activities in person. Even though they would appreciate an online platform to help them with sales (especially in case of emergencies, like – but not limited to – the pandemic), they don’t want it to just replace their current way of selling their things. Fortunately, the physical market already has activities that can’t be transferred to an online platform, which means this is not something they need to be worried about.
- Feira Praça da República is a well known place from São Paulo, especially among people that love handiwork and cultural diversity. It’s considered a tourist attraction, where people from other states – sometimes even from neighboring countries – take the opportunity to visit the place and buy things. The negative side of it is that complaints about lack of security are getting more common. It’s something the association can’t control, since the market takes place in a public space.
- Handcrafted products are more expensive than industrialized ones, and price is a factor that can make people give up buying a handcrafted product. But some people can be convinced to spend more money on them by giving “feelings and love” to the handicraft
Personas
It’s important that, based on the research and interviews, we specify who our users are, to understand their pain and find the best solution to their problems. Thus three personas were created for this: The Exhibitor, which represent the people who sell their creations at the market; The Regular, representing people that live nearby, so have easy access to the market; and The Visitor from Afar, representing those who know about the market but live too far to visit it.
- They sell in the market for more than 10 years, so they are recognizable by the people passing by
- They love what they do and don’t intend to stop
- Like to interact and talk to people
- They wish to have a stable income with their job
- Want their job to be recognized more people, to not only be restricted in their region
- Their income hasn’t recovered yet even after the pandemic
- It upsets them that the municipality doesn’t help them either by promoting them or talking better care of their space, since it’s a public space, despite the market being well known in the city
- Online apps didn’t help them as much as they wished
😄 Greats
Loves the food at the physical market
Lives nearby or has really easy access to the market
Knows the variety of products that are sold at the market
process of crafting
🙂 Goods
Knows the importance to help local businesses
The art and processes of crafting excites her, as well as the journey of the exhibitors
☹ Bads
Knows that the security of the area is lacking. They fears for their safety
Handicraft is too pricey compared to industrialized products
Heard a lot of positive things from the market, so the place is in their list of “places to visit”
They are seasoned handicraft buyers
- They like handicrafts from different cultures, and know that the market is a place full of people of different cultural backgrounds
Lives far away from the market. States away from it even
Can have the bad luck to go in a day where there’s not many exhibitors for whatever reason
Don’t know what kind of product they sell
How Might We?
We listened to the users and gathered a lot of information regarding their situation, so that we can picture our problems and think about solutions and use opportunities in our favor. So, how might we…
- …make the online selling experience easier for the elderly?
- …make the connection between the clients with the artist and artisans easier?
- …use the platform to encourage people to also try an offline experience?
Ideate!
First and foremost, the format of the website will be of a marketplace with a little touch of a blog. Only members of the association are allowed to sell from there, since it’s limited for the exhibitors of Feira República Hippie. This way is more advantageous than the ecommerce format because since the physical place is already a market, it would make sense that the same could be done in a digital domain. That allows the exhibitors to insert and remove the products themselves instead of relying on a third party. Besides, that also allows them to have their own profile pages showing more of their products, instead of just marketing it as “Feira Praça da República” products. But here lies one of our important questions to create the product: How might we make the online selling experience easier for the elderly?
For that, we first need to analyze the methods they tried to use to sell their products online and why they weren’t successful. Our research showed that the ones that tried to sell online, mostly used platforms such Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp or Mercado Livre (the most popular marketplace in Brazil at that time). The ones that used only Mercado Livre had very poor performance – although, according to them, it’s pretty easy to register a product and put it for sale on that website – while the sales were more favorable among the other platforms. The reason for that is also revealed by the people that were interviewed: most of the little successful sales during the lockdown were to people that already knew them, like friends and family, and some of them regular clients. Some of them even used word-of-mouth marketing, which bolstered their sales by a little bit. It was also mentioned that direct contact with the client, like in WhatsApp, is usually their favorite method, because they can learn better their clients’ wishes, since they work with craft and sometimes these can be customized.
That said, we came to the idea that we could take inspiration from Mercado Livre’s interface to make our own product registration page. But still, how will that make the online selling experience easier for the elderly? The answer is: it’s not only about the way to register products. Their page and products will also be linked to their respective WhatsApp numbers, which will be easily accessible for the clients in case they want to chat with the exhibitor before finishing a purchase, since it’s a method they appreciate the most.
That said, we also get closer to the answer to another question: How might we make the connection between the clients with the artist and artisans easier?
Using the preferred way to communicate – Whatsapp – is one of them, but that’s not enough. The other thing that set the client and the exhibitor apart was the fact that they couldn’t find each other when everything had to be shut down for months. That happened because the clients usually remember that they bought something from the market, but they don’t always know the name of the seller, unless you are a regular. To put it simply: a big factor that will solve the issue is to use the name of the market as their “brand” name, since we’ve already learned that Feira Praça da República is quite popular. That way, people will have an easier time finding not only more information about the market, but also their products and what to expect there, since the website will provide more information about themselves. This is especially helpful to people that never visited São Paulo before but are aware of the market. With the website, they will have a reliable source of information about Feira Praça da República and the exhibitors. To help further, one of the categories present in the header is exclusively about the exhibitors, where the users can find a list of all the registered exhibitors of the market and what they do/sell. From the list, it’s possible to go to their personal pages and find out more information about them, their contact and the products they sell. It’s also possible to follow the exhibitor to be updated about new products, restock, among others.
We should not forget that the exhibitors don’t wish to transform the market into a total online experience. That said, how might we use the platform to encourage people to also try an offline experience? This one is a bit more tricky. Thankfully, we could use some websites as an inspiration: it’s a website that promotes products from vulnerable groups of people and helps them have more stable incomes. These sites are ecommerce mixed with a blog to also present more about these groups and their way of work. With that in mind, we have decided to also follow that model, but with a marketplace. The website is gonna be used to show things that cannot be translated into an online experience, thus encouraging them to not buy products from the exhibitors, but also awaken their wishes to go see the market in person and have the full experience Feira Praça da República can offer. Fortunately, a lot of positive reviews highlight experiences that people can only have in person, so these are getting placed in the front page, in a spot where it’s going to be easily seen when the website is open. Another addition that will help with that is a cathegory dedicated for the blog of the market, a feature that’s going to be used to give update about their activities and cultural events.
Develop!
With the ideas all set, it comes the time to design. First, sketches for the ideas for the pages were made, to have a better idea of the design before starting a proper wireframe. Some different ideas were made, and the best idea was chosen.
Wireframing
After choosing from the best ideas, wireframes were made to have a better and cleaner view of the general idea.
Style guide
The client wanted the UI design to reflect the energy and the mood of the market. They don’t have a logo for themselves, so we’ve got the freedom to make one for them. We thought about the main colors of the market in real life: the tents are yellow, and their items are very colorful. Thus, the logo has the primary colors with yellow in the center to represent its colorful nature, and asymmetrical design to represent the handcrafted aspect.
We based on the colors of the logo to make the palette for the website. But in place of yellow, brown was used, since it’s a less bright color and more readable for text. The inspiration was their objects that are made of brown things such as wood, clay and leather, which is common in the market. The font used for H1 and H2 headings is Shadows Into Light, because it reflects the art and artisan aspect of the market while not being hard to read. For the lesser headers and for the texts, the chosen font was Montserrat for its smooth curves and non-serif nature, allowing for a fluid and easy reading.
High fidelity wireframing
The following images show the wireframe close to the final design, ready to be prototyped. The categories of the header bar is, from left to right, are: News – for new products; Products – for the list of products available, in which more specific categories can be selected from a list (for example, necklaces, vases etc.); Exhibitors – for the list of exhibitors; About us; Blog of the Market; and Contact.
What's next?
The next plan is to test the prototype with the users, since this is a user-centered product. These are the clients, which will access the site to buy and check information, and the exhibitors, especially for the product registration and editing page, to confirm (or adjust, in case the results are negative) that the page is indeed intuitive and easy to use, especially for elderly people. Then later, the idea is to analyze if the features are being properly used, if some are obsolete or need some change, and if some need to be added, by analyzing the page accesses.