Challenge

User Interviews

I conducted 12 in-depth interviews with craft business owners in Italy focused on their current business landscape, including:

• Current goals for their business
• Main tasks and how they accomplish them
• Major pain-points in completing their tasks

Findings

User interviews among small craft business owners in Italy revealed that they seek to increase customer acquisition by:

• Building an online presence through social media, booking websites, and their personal business website
• Working together with other local businesses to create better experiences for tourists
• Documenting their craft using photos and videos

However, they encounter problems in reaching this goal because:

• Lack of digital technology knowledge: Wide spectrum when it comes to technology adoption and knowledge
• Time constraints: They cannot run their business while also marketing
• Local infrastructure: Lack of local infrastructure makes it difficult to attract visitors

Design

Requirements

• Facilitate a personal connection with craft business owners and consumers (tourists)
• Enable business owners to upload storytelling content for their shop, as well as products available for sale
• Simplify coordination among local small businesses to create place-based experiences for tourists
• Make it easy for consumers to plan trips

Initial concepts

Product discovery and e-commerce

Personal connections with places and businesses

Next Steps

We presented findings of our initial user research and concept development with stakeholders in the Italian government, and are currently working on:

• In-depth interviews with travel-minded consumers to understand goals and needs of other target user
• Survey among craft business owners in Italy to confirm generalizability of findings
• Test low-fidelity prototype for key user flows