Background & Goals

Copied from Supplier Hub Discovery Project Plan for demoing purposes

⁠

Discovery⁠

is a set of activities done to yield shared knowledge, and structure and inform anticipated design decisions.

Background

TL;DR: Group Collect believes the utility of its Supplier Hub product is obscured by the product’s unintuitive user interface and has asked Flagrant for help.

Longer version: In June 2022 Group Collect CEO Corey Black contracted Dual Boot Partners to develop an initial prototype of his Supplier Hub product concept. Envisioned as a pay-to-play directory of organizations (“suppliers”) from whom tour operators (“operators”) might purchase products/services, the Supplier Hub promises to lower operating costs for both parties.

Around the same time, Corey contracted Flagrant to develop a related product called Group Tour Ops (GTO) (see the background section

here⁠

). Whereas the Supplier Hub is meant to make the market between suppliers and operators more efficient, GTO seeks to improve and standardize operators’ trip management workflows.

In July, Corey commissioned

a video⁠

demonstrating how suppliers might add information to the Supplier Hub. Corey later shared this video at one of the annual trade shows he attends every August, but didn’t get the response he wanted from suppliers. Corey later terminated his contract with Dual Boot Partners, and directed two of his colleagues, Bud Geissler and Sharon Keating, to provide more hands-on

demonstrations ⁠

to suppliers.

Bud and Sharon believe the product does not do a good job of communicating its value on account of its poor usability. In February 2023, Corey asked Flagrant to improve the Supplier Hub before his annual trade show-tour begins in August.

Because Flagrant is largely unfamiliar with the work done to date, and we haven’t yet established clear success criteria (outside of “improving the product’s usability” before August), we propose conducting a brief discovery effort.

Goals

Over the next few weeks we want to:

Identify stakeholders and confirm their roles relative to this effort

Generate shared knowledge by reviewing the work done to date (the app itself, prior documentation, etc.), talking to stakeholders, and moderating usability tests with prospective customers / suppliers

Achieve consensus on the problem space by identifying and framing the problem(s) to address (which could include everything from problem statements to usability errors) and their relative importance to one another

Collaboratively chart at least one path forward by describing desired outcomes that include (but are not limited to) a demo-able web-app that meets user needs, business needs, and technical requirements that is free of its known defects (such as being “mobile hostile”).

Parallel goals

Make it easier for the team to conduct

continuous user research⁠

⁠

Inform the Supplier Hub’s go-to-market strategy

Build relationships (and shared understanding) we’ll need to effectively deliver

Identify milestones for measuring progres

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