Magnet Strength Selection Guide
Interactive content providing a path to products
- UX research
Project Overview
Increasing Engagement with Interactive Content
This project piloted a process for improving the user experience with content that helps customers conceptualise unfamiliar concepts and guides them to an appropriate selection of products. This work advances the company’s digital publishing content strategy by creating and testing interactive industrial information to increase customer engagement. My primary role was a UX researcher, but I also provided content strategy and written content.
Client
McMaster-Carr Supply Company
My Roles
UX Researcher
Achievements
Increased Engagement by 12%
Increased Unique Visitors by 16%
Empathise
Understanding Customer Needs
Our team spent six weeks researching customers to understand their needs and identify where the current web experience fails to meet their expectations. Our initial research of navigation behaviour and transactions revealed several indicators of pain points in the current experience.
Issues with Current User Experience
- Thrashing behaviour on the landing page
- Difficult-to-understand technical jargon such as “flux density” and “maximum energy product”
- Low interaction rate for existing general information content, which focuses on explaining technical terminology rather than aiding selection
Empathising with Customers
After this initial internal research, we conducted 44 qualitative phone interviews and 6 in-person ethnographic visits to understand customer needs. We spoke to customers from very different industries who use magnets for many dissimilar applications. We thought we would identify several personas with unique needs during our user research. But we instead found that even though customers have very different uses for magnets, they all think about them in similar ways.
What customers said
"I don’t care what the magnet material is, I just need it to do the job."
"The magnet I bought was weaker than I thought it would be, but I just used it for something else."
"I don't really know what "maximum pull" means—I just want to know if a magnet can hold up a screwdriver on a workbench."
How do customers think about magnets?
- Magnets are not a high-priority purchase. Customers see magnets as a versatile, low-cost solution with many applications.
- They want to quickly find a “good enough” magnet that will get the job done—and once they find something that suits, they repurchase the same magnets without considering alternatives.
What information is important to customers?
Strength
- 70% of customers said strength was the most important selection factor.
- Customers do not think about magnet strength as a discrete value, instead considering an approximate range that would suit their needs.
- They use trial and error when selecting magnets since magnet strength is difficult to conceptualise.
Size, shape & mounting style
- Physical considerations that affect installation and application were the second-most important attributes for customers.
Define
Identifying Problems & Defining Scope
After conducting research, we held a two-day sprint with reviewers to share what we learned and determine the project focus and scope. We decided to focus on designing an experience that helps customers understand magnet pull strength.
Problem Statement
Customers want to concretely conceptualise magnet pull strength and find the right products for their application because they don’t want to spend a lot of time deliberating on a minor purchase.
Iterate
Designing Engaging Industrial Information
Armed with the findings from user research and our problem statement, we started working on developing potential solutions. My role in this stage involved writing copy for the designs, developing some early sketches, and providing feedback to the designers tasked with creating alternative designs.
Early Iterations
I played a supportive role in the iterative design process, working on the copy and serving as an advocate for customers as designs progressed. But I also created a few early concept sketches. Early designs included information about many factors relevant to magnet selection, but we realised these designs did not focus on the core user problem we identified—the need to conceptualise magnet pull strength.
One of My Early Concept Sketches
Design Team Early Iteration
Focused Design Solutions
In the next round of iteration, the UX team simplified the design to narrowly focus on magnet pull strength and experimented with several methods of visually describing this information. Internal reviewers provided feedback throughout the iterative process.
Machine Shop Illustration Showing Magnets in Use
Photorealistic Design Comparing Pull Strength
Prototype & Test
Final Design
I was not involved in later-stage prototyping and testing with users, but the design team worked with a developer to code a functional prototype that was tested with customers. After incorporating feedback from users, the team conducted A/B testing that showed this new content to half of customers who viewed the magnets page. The new content resulted in a 12% higher engagement rate and 16% more unique visitors.
Reflection
What I Learned
During the customer research process and my involvement with the written elements of the industrial information design, I learned a great deal that I will apply to future work.
Achievements
- Piloted a successful process for creating dynamic, interactive presentations that help customers find the right products
- Helped to develop new standards and practices for ethnographic research visits
Insights
- Customers think about magnets differently than how our product information is structured. This project was solely focused on creating new industrial information content, but many customers told us we publish information they don’t understand or need to know.
- This has large implications for content strategy in digital publications. Dedicated customer research should be the foundation of every product category revision to ensure that our efforts are focused on what information will be most helpful to customers rather than what internal stakeholders think is important.