Intercept Survey Design for Groupon Merchants

Project Initiative

It comes from a sudden demand requested by the senior leadership. We were required to push an intercept survey in Groupon Merchant Center (Tool A) in front of our merchants to collect their booking habits and the likelihood of adopting the Groupon Booking Tool.

By the way, this is an 8-day project (for the design process), which is unusually short. It means that I have three days to come up with a solution and five days to nail down all the details and deliver my design to the Engineer Team.

This case study will illustrate how I delivered something, not just usable but with good user experience within such a tight deadline, far beyond the team's expectation.

Project Expectation

As soon as I received this case, I know I have to handle things differently this time.

- I won't have time to do any in-depth research or any forms of validation in my design process.
- Most of my decision makings will be based on my design knowledge, former experience from other projects, and sometimes, instinct.
- There will not be enough time for rounds of iterations or back and forth discussions.

The entire team's goal is to get this project done in time and deliver something that is "usable."The tight deadline applies not only to design but also to the whole team. So I plan to get the design finished in time, of course, and hopefully, striving for a better user experience.

Reframe the Project Requirement from design's point of view

Project Requirements from Manager

The PM has already scoped out the design requirements for this project. Here is what he wrote:

"Must appear to all merchants who complete Campaign Creation Flow in Tool A once they reach the congrats screen. Must contain a brief booking pitch, questions about which booking software they use, and whether we can follow-up with them."

Distill the Project Goal by taking a step back

The requirement itself is crystal-clear and straightforward. The PM has also drafted all the content for me to use. So I can entirely focus on the user experience, the user experience for this Intercept Survey, and how that will affect Tool A's user experience since we are inserting something into Tool A, which is controlled by another team. I also need to think about their criteria to evaluate this project from that team's perspective to ensure this project's success.

With a holistic picture of what this project means for the users, the Booking team, Tool A's team, and Groupon, I was able to distill the project goal:

ENGAGE - Engage as many merchants as possible in a delightful way.
PITCH - Introduce Groupon Booking Tool and raise merchants' awareness.
SURVEY - Collect quality information from merchants thru the survey.
And More - Try not to interrupt the original flow in Tool A.

The goals will help me make better decisions throughout the design process. They will also serve as a standard, so I know the direction I'm working towards, avoiding chances of circling back and forth.

Where & how should we insert this Intercept Survey?

Understand the original user flow

I was requested to insert the intercept survey at the end of the Campaign Creation Flow in Tool A after the merchant finished up creating a campaign and lands on the Congrats Page.

The first thing I did was to quickly get familiar with this flow by reaching out to their designers, asking for design files, and asking them some critical questions:

- How does this tool work?
- What's the ideal user journey loos like?
- What's the thought behind the Congrats Page?
- What's the key indicator of this flow's success?

Through my discovery, here is the most critical thing I found and would impact my design:

Campaign Creation Flow (in Tool A) is not a finish-and-done process. It's a loop, and we wish our user could finish several rounds of that flow.

From here, I have collected all the context information I needed. So I immediately started heading down to generate my ideas and move closer to a decent solution.

Drafts on the new user flow

I started drafting the new user flow and think about all kinds of ways to insert the intercept survey - both traditional ways and untraditional ways. I quickly evaluated all the possibilities from both UX and implementation point of view. And I narrowed it down to three distinct proposals, with each of them having different highlights and drawbacks.

Original

Proposal 1

Proposal 2

Proposal 3

The next step would be to decide on those three options, with product, sales, operation, strategy's brains kicking in.

Flow for a Survey with 3 questions and 1 pitch

As I mentioned, this is a design for an intercept survey. Specifically, this is a survey with only three questions with one paragraph of the pitch, which has already been identified and drafted by the Product Team. My responsibility here is to surface that information, with user experience bear in mind.

The sequence of pitch will affect lots of things

Each survey flow variation has its strength and weakness. And it is a good thing to list it out. Now it's a good time for me to start collecting some feedback and make sure I'm on the right track.

Visualize promising proposals

Visualize various options in order to solicit feedback

To present my ideas to the team and senior leadership, I visualized three main proposals, combining different user flow and survey flow. I've also pointed out the pros and cons of each proposal. So people can quickly digest my design and evaluate them.

When I list the pros and cons, I tied them closely with the goals identified earlier. So it served as a standard measurement to analyze each of the proposals.

ENGAGE - Engage as many merchants as possible in a delightful way.
PITCH - Introduce Groupon Booking Tool and raise merchants' awareness.
SURVEY - Collect quality information from merchants thru the survey.

Positive feedbacks are received across the board

These three proposals were presented to a larger team as well as the senior leadership. The result is cheerful. Those three proposals are all well received and liked by the team. And they chose what was the best for our product strategy.

As a result, two out of three proposals get adopted:
- Proposal 1 is selected for near-term implementation.
- Proposal 2 is selected as a long-term direction.

Final Outcome

Once the decision is made, I just headed down to finalizing the details for the final delivery. I connected with the Design System Team to make sure all the components are appropriately used. I connected with the Content Strategist to polish the copy we are using. And as the very last step, I delivered everything to the Engineer Team for implementation.

After just a couple days of launching, we are seeing good engagement with the Intercept Survey - with 15%–20% of participants completing the flow and indicating that they are interested in the Groupon Booking Tool.