Conducting User Research on Micro-Merchants in Jakarta and Bangkok
Discovering new opportunities for financial mobile applications
Project Overview
In late 2019, Silot launched 2 different MVP mobile apps in Bangkok and Jakarta with little field or market research. They targeted micro-merchants, and aimed to engage users as a business toolkit, enable QR payments, and promote micro-loans. The apps faced poor adoption and retention, and the team did not know why.
As we had a poor understanding of our target users, I set out to conduct exploratory user research with my team. Our goal was to validate prior assumptions, uncover potential problems, and hopefully discover a product market fit.
RESULTS: The research informed iterations to an existing feature (bookkeeping), spawned 4 other product initiatives, and eventually led to major changes in Silot's business strategy.
Bangkok: Nov--Dec 2019
Jakarta: Feb 2020
Conducted user research, market research, and concept validation. Led the affinity mapping and design prototyping.
Information on this project is limited. Please contact me for full case study.
The Problem
Silot wanted to offer micro-loans via mobile app directly to micro-merchants in Bangkok and Jakarta. Loan qualification traditionally requires documents like credit or salary history. Micro-merchants usually did not have access to credit nor payslips. Information thus had to be collected and validated in an innovative way.
The initial iterations of the apps explored multiple methods to engage users and collect data. These features were not based on any research nor data but solely on assumptions. The product team lacked understanding of the target audience and market. After a month of iterating on assumptions, neither apps gained much traction, and as a team we pushed for proper research and validation.
We received the green light to conduct user research in the respective cities, and planning began.
Hypothesising Together
We listed assumptions made during the design of the MVP apps so we could validate them. We also freely brainstormed about things we wanted to know.
-- Does our target audience really only use Android devices?
-- Do merchants in Jakarta and Bangkok have similar needs and problems?
-- What might drive a micro-merchant to take a loan?
Screen, Interview, Translate
We then crafted a survey to recruit interview participants, and a local third party company was engaged to distribute them to micro-merchants.
The goal was to identify potential user problems. We focused on understanding the merchants, asking questions about their business goals and personal dreams, and observing how they run their business day to day. This sort of questioning gives rise to more innovative solutions later.
All the surveys and interview scripts had to be translated into Thai and Bahasa Indonesian. I was accompanied by local teammates who shadowed my interviews and took notes if the participant could speak English, otherwise they would conduct the interview and translate to me as it happened.
In total, we documented 22 interviews in Bangkok, and 16 interviews in Jakarta.
Q: Why did you decide to start a business?
A: "I raise four children and care for my bedridden mother by myself. I have to work from home."  – Merchant, Bangkok
Distilling Insights: How similar are merchants in JKT vs BKK?
I led the team in affinity mapping remotely in Miro. We discovered several interesting behaviours as well as cultural factors that had not been taken into consideration during the MVP design.
Discussing Archetypes
Throughout the course of our interviews and affinity mapping, we identified a few merchant archetypes. Archetypes
Facilitating Rapid Concept Validation
We organised a focus group with 2 food and beverage merchants and one convenience store owner to test a few bookkeeping and marketing concepts. The concepts were low fidelity, interactive prototypes that demonstrated the idea while keeping it open to interpretation. We had ideated and sketched as a team after defining problem statements, and I then did rapid prototyping in Axure RP to bring the concepts to life.
After each prototype was shown, the participants discussed their thoughts. We gained valuable insights on how they would use a concept, their feelings toward certain technologies, and learned more about their problems and current workarounds when they suggested improvements.
Two prototypes for bookkeeping/product listing in particular generated much discussion around its use and were received favourably by all 3 merchants due to its simplicity of use, while offering flexibility around product variations.
Prioritising Iterations and Problems
A few assumptions made during the MVP design were debunked. One of them was the idea that micro-merchants would largely own Android devices: 41% of our survey participants in Bangkok used an iOS device!
We had also gathered enough evidence that thorough bookkeeping was deemed as both necessary but hugely troublesome in both cities. As a result, many kept poor records, and were thus unable to formulate a business strategy or review their business performance in a meaningful way.
Both our interviews and market research showed us there was an opportunity to introduce a free, simple records keeper tied to product listings. Existing softwares or apps catered to larger businesses and were complex to learn and use as a result.
The MVP already had a simple transaction recording feature that we could expand to solve this problem. The bookkeeping prototypes demonstrated during our focus group had also been well received by the participants. Additionally, regular transactions recorded by a user could be used to determine income amongst other things required for loan qualification.
All of these factors led to the product team prioritising the following problem statement: Merchants need a simpler and more engaging way to do bookkeeping, because they find it troublesome to do it manually, and end up not having a clear picture of their business strategy.
Our research paved the way to more innovations.
We shared our findings across the company. The findings inspired four separate projects in the Product and Data teams, leading to new features built, with the well performing ones being considered for intergration with the main apps.
One of them was a business location planner MVP, that used both Google API and data our team had procured to determine if a chosen location was a good spot for an intended business. You can read about that project by clicking on the Next Project below.
