BC Bud Culture

With this project, my group and I aimed to design a web experience that would bring “BC Bud” to the new world of legalized cannabis as well as offer a new, personalized e-commerce experience that would make legacy cannabis users more comfortable shopping online. Burb is a cannabis dispensary with a culture deeply rooted in “BC Bud”. “BC Bud” is synonymous around the world with high-quality cannabis from expert growers on the west coast over many decades, even before legalization.

We knew we had to figure out how to get the message of "high quality cannabis is here", through e-commerce.

Research

My role in the research part of the project was to take a deep dive into what Burb is as a company. My perspective was that since “BC Bud” is such a deeply rooted part of Burb’s brand and culture, it would make a lot of sense if we could design something for the user’s who closely associate themselves with that too. With more and more people wanting to try cannabis, why not design something that can help those first-timers who don't want to visit an intimidating brick-and mortar cannabis shop.

It would make the most sense to design something for the customers who would need the most help online.

Company Analysis

Demograhic Research

I also did research on the demographics of the cannabis industry, looking for meaningful takeaways that would inform my design decisions centered around the users. And while business considerations were not required for the project, I did want to make sure that this process of designing something for a client would be realistic and applicable in the real world. I found here that the majority of cannabis users today are at the age where they likely would have been using cannabis before it was legalized. We will call these users, legacy cannabis users.

Key Insights

Problem Statement

The problem statement, synthesized from researching Burb’s culture and company mission, is aimed at making sure we come up with a solution that helps users make an educated and informed decision about their cannabis purchase if they are not familiar with the newly legalized cannabis market.

Our Solutions

Initial Designs and Wireframes

These are website wireframes that I worked on. The intention with the layouts was to introduce users to Burb’s culture and then help them feel comfortable in the shopping experience.

Home Page

Product Page

Explore Page

Personalized High Page

Final Designs

Personalized Experience Flow

Our personalized shopping experience was designed to emulate the service you would get in Burb stores. When designing this feature I did research into what users may want out of their cannabis experience. Like whether they are using it to relax or re-energize, how they want to consume their cannabis, and what kind of feeling they want out of it. After considering all these factors, the feature would provide suggestions based on what the user wants.

Reflection

Looking back on this project, I'd say that the most valuable skill I gained from completing this project was how to conduct proper research. More specifically, knowing what to research in order to find information that is useful pushes me towards finding a good solution for the client. In this case, it was researching other successful brands and finding out what made their customers so loyal to them.

Working together with my group members also went extremely well and I learned a lot about how to keep things organized in a self-directed group. Things like making a weekly timeline where we would each put down our availabilities made it easy to find times when we could all get together and make decisions on the direction of our project, and agreeing to leave egos out of our workspace made collaboration go extremely smoothly and ensured we always got the best ideas.

While I am very proud of the work we did on creating an online shopping experience that made customers feel like they were making informed decisions, I do think we could have made the site look more visually comforting to more closely match Burb’s culture and mission.