Client: Dock 6 Pottery

Methods: WebSite content Inventory,Competitive & Comparative Analysis, Contextual Inquiry, Stakeholder Interviews, Touch Point Strategy Map, Design Sprint, Rapid Prototyping, Remote User Testing

Tools: Card Sorting, Wire-framing, InVision App, Sketch, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator

Dock 6 is a handmade, production pottery studio located in Minneapolis. They have been in business for over 20 years. For many of those years, Dock 6 only sold their products B2B to wholesale customers. Recently, the owner of Dock 6 decided to start also selling her products directly to the public. She started to do this by selling a few products on Etsy and Amazon. Recently, Dock 6 opened a retail gallery and classroom space to further expand their customer outreach. Dock 6 is starting to see rewards for these efforts, and their direct to customer business is growing.  I was brought in to help Dock 6 add an e-commerce store to their website that could serve both wholesale and retail customers.

At the start of this project, my knowledge of pottery was strictly limited to what I had seen in the Patrick Swayze movie “Ghost”. I had never taken a pottery class or shopped for pottery before. I was starting from scratch when it came to researching this project.

Around the time I began this project, Minneapolis happened to be hosting a national pottery convention called NCECA “Claytopia”. I was able to attend the convention. I was also able to visit several different gallery showings, and events supporting “Claytopia”. Speaking with pottery makers, and fans of pottery, helped me understand how pottery is made, where it is sold, and who is buying it.

To further understand Dock 6’s business, I spent some time with the people there. I was able to shadow a manager for a day and held interviews with the Dock 6 management team.  While I was at their space, I was able to gain a better understanding of their business, and who their customers are.

One of the main things that I noticed at Dock 6 was that they use a lot of paper! People’s desks were covered in paperwork. Orders are printed and used to track orders from creation through to shipping. Dock 6 uses software to manage their employee time tracking, however, this software is old and every timecard needs adjusting by hand. Evidence was everywhere indicating that Dock 6 employees had built their own systems and artifacts to help them cope with using digital tools that are not meeting their current needs. After spending time with these people, I wanted to help them by suggesting ways to digitize some of these paper tasks.

As a 20-year-old business, Dock 6 uses many different platforms to touch their customers. However, several of these customer touch-points are new to them. Dock 6 messaging feels slightly different in each of these spaces. After doing research into Dock 6 and how it is currently using digital platforms, I wanted to recommend a strategy for unifying their customer facing messaging. My strategy for Dock 6 also works toward strengthening their customer connections as an artisan brand. It will attempt to do that by spotlighting their artisan products, their physical classroom space and their product makers.

Selling products directly to retail customers is currently a very small part of Dock 6’s overall sales. But, this part of their business if growing. Growth here may be an indication of what the future holds for Dock 6. Social media and e-commerce have made it so retail customers are now able to connect directly to products and makers online. Customers no longer need to rely on the traditional method of discovering products at retail stores. These online connections may be changing the way people shop.

Another problem that companies like Dock 6 currently have is, it is difficult to communicate the value of artisan goods online. Dock 6’s handmade products appear in an Amazon search along side cheaper, mass-produced goods. Online, these items look very similar in every way, except in price. For this reason, I think that Dock 6 is smart to start their own e-commerce store to sell their products directly from their own website. On their website, they can present their own products, their way.

Dock 6 had another big problem when it came to organizing their e-commerce store. Considering the various colors and size options for their products, Dock 6 offers over 20,000 different product combinations.

To begin figuring out how to best organize the store, I made a Card Sort. I printed out pictures of many different Dock 6 products and brought them to a party. At the party, I provided different product categories and asked participants to place photos of Dock 6 products under the category headlines where they thought that product belonged. Participants were also encouraged to create their own category headlines if they felt that any of the pictured products did not fit into any of the categories that I provided. At the party, I collected data from 10 participants and I was able to use this information to start grouping Dock 6 items into a prototype for an e-commerce store.

I used the InVision App to prototype an entire e-commerce store. I used this prototype to conduct remote user testing on the potential store layout with Dock 6 employees and potential customers.

 From my research findings and the time I spent at Dock 6, I have put together a plan for launching a Dock 6 e-commerce store by the end of the summer. I have done research into costs and different ways that Dock 6 employees can accomplish launching this store themselves. In addition to launching the online store, I have presented Dock 6 with options for implementing free, or inexpensive, business tools to help them digitally manage some of the tasks they are currently accomplishing on paper.

In the beginning of this project, I hoped to help Dock 6 look at their current digital strategy and to take steps towards launching an e-commerce store. After spending time with the people at Dock 6, I also wanted to provide suggestions that could make their workday a little easier. I am currently about to turn all of my findings over to the people at Dock 6. From there, how we proceed will be up to them. I have a feeling that you will be able to purchase from a Dock 6 e-commerce store before too long.