Design sprint as a fast track for Hartwall's new service

“When restaurant owners contact us, we work together to plan what equipment and products are needed. However, opening a restaurant involves plenty of regulations, applications and provisions, and new restaurant owners also need information more generally in order to move forward efficiently,” says Tiina Happonen, Hartwall’s Customer Marketing Manager and the project leader, says and continues:

“We wanted to create a new service that would provide important information from the start of a restaurant project. One of our goals was to get good visibility in the target market so that we can help restaurants create their beverage concepts early on.”

“However, another goal for the service was to also make the work of our own sales team easier. Our sales team often advises new restaurants on a very wide range of issues, not just those related to the beverages. There was clear demand for an information packet on opening a restaurant. Our sales team can now happily refer people to this service for accurate information.”

This means that the goal of the project was to both generate sales leads and help Hartwall’s salespersons work more efficiently. “We want to help our customers but also bring in new customers. These perspectives were combined in this service,” Tiina says.

Before starting the project, Hartwall looked for a suitable partner for the project’s service, UI/UX and visual design. Lamia was selected thanks to its expertise. “We already got a lot of ideas and good questions from Lamia’s designers during the offer stage, which impressed us. We wanted the new service to be designed by a company that is specialized in user experience,” Tiina says.

For the technical implementation of the new service, it felt natural for Hartwall to use the Group’s existing web partner, which is why the collaboration with Lamia focused on design work.

Lamia helped limit the scope of the service by a lot at the start of the project. However, the service in question was a completely new kind of service that Hartwall had not provided before. Decisions had not yet been made about the service concept and the technologies. Technology in particular sets limits on the design, which is why it was a good idea to choose the technology to be used right at the start.

In the concept, it was decided that the content management system (CMS) of Hartwall’s existing website would be used to create a parallel website instead of creating a separate portal or online store. “Thanks to this choice, we were able to quickly start focusing on the website’s structure and content, which are more important for the customer experience than technology,” says Nina Leppänen from Lamia’s design team.

MVP thinking was essential. “Right from the start, we limited the scope to the key features, which allowed us to start moving forward quickly. We can add more to the service in the future,” Tiina says.

One example of limiting the scope is related to the extent of the information offered by the service. Instead of all the information being written out in the new service, a decision was made to include plenty of links to other sources of information, such as legal information. “By doing this, we can sustainably control the content update needs and trust that our customers will always receive the most up-to-date information.”

During the design sprint, a clear framework was built for the new service, describing what information is needed at each stage of the visitor path.

During the first day, Lamia’s team of designers surveyed Hartwall’s own six-person team’s needs and observations for the service. The various needs were prioritized through discussions between the teams. On the second day, a clear scope was defined for the new service and its implementation and goals were set.

“We had very extensive discussions on what should happen when somebody comes to the website, what they are looking for on the website, what kind of information they need to proceed in the service, how we can get their contact details and so on. In the end, we were able to make the user path very clear, simple and user-friendly,” says Tiina from Hartwall.

Based on the user path, Lamia used InVision to build a quick prototype for the purpose of user testing and interviews. Two of Hartwall’s existing customers with recent experience of opening a restaurant were chosen for the user testing stage. “Even though the user testing stage was limited, the chosen user profiles were very different from each other and we received a lot of input about the prototype and the service,” Nina from Lamia's design team says.

At the end of the design sprint week, Lamia compiled all the conclusions, observations and results from the interviews and created a roadmap for the service.

The design sprint week was followed by the UI/UX design stage, which was a week-long period of building a prototype. Lamia created a couple of different visual styles for the prototype, of which Hartwall chose the one that suited it best. The website’s structure was also worked on and content was planned.

In accordance with the original limits on technology, the CMS’s existing content blocks were used as much as possible. In addition to that, a few new blocks and a tailored contact form were created.

During the UI/UX design stage, plenty of time was invested in the contact form, as the preliminary information provided by contacts is valuable for Hartwall’s sales team. “With the help of the preliminary information, we can immediately find the best possible expert to contact the lead. Opening a wine bistro is very different from opening, for example, a nightclub, and we also have local experts for different areas,” Tiina says.

“The end result looks good and is easy to use. Lamia also implemented Hartwall’s visual identity very well. The website looks like a Hartwall website without being an identical copy of our main website,” Tiina says of the project’s result.

From the perspective of the designer, the intensive project carried out over a few weeks was able to crystallize what is essential. “During the design sprint, we became aware of many needs that the people from Hartwall said they never would have thought of otherwise. The customer path in particular was a valuable creation that demonstrated what is needed from the new service,” Nina says.

Hartwall also emphasizes the importance of finding and realizing the essential: “Services can be implemented in many ways, and it’s a good idea to analyze needs more closely to find the most suitable implementation method. Sometimes you also have to let go of any extra features because the simplest is often the best.”

The new website was launched at https://www.hartwall.fi/perustetaanravintola/.

“It was different, but the design sprint went very well. We voted on things remotely and all the six people present were able to provide input even though we were not in the same space. Working remotely somewhat prevented discussions from going off on a tangent, which was both a good and a bad thing – we stayed on topic but, on the other hand, it was more difficult to include and assess every idea. However, I definitely think that the result we got with a remote design sprint was as good as that of a face-to-face design sprint,” Tiina says of the impact of remote work on the project.

Lamia’s design workshops are usually carried out in close contact, surrounded by post-its. In the remote model, workshops used Miro instead of post-its. “Our collaboration went well. The pace of work was at least as intense as it would have been working face-to-face,” says Lamia’s UI/UX Designer Nina Leppänen laughing.