Developing a Website for Local Vendors in Northwest Arkansas

Learning how to support local communities through virtual platforms has certainly been a challenge of my research, but the learning experience has been one I will never forget. My name is Katherine Games, and I am studying Information Systems, Economics, and Management at the Walton College of Business. This semester, I continued my research of understanding the needs of local artists and producers and creating a service which would capture these needs. Originally, I had planned to study abroad in Belize over the summer with Dr. Amy Farmer from the Economics department of the Walton College and apply the research methodology to the Northwest Arkansas community. Because of COVID-19, these plans were pushed to next summer, but this did not stop me from pursuing research in Northwest Arkansas. With the help of my mentor, who framed my understanding of how to approach community development, I was able to interview local artists and producers and apply this information to designing a service for them.

As a member of Enactus, a social entrepreneurship club at the University of Arkansas, I had been involved in various projects which focused on identifying and addressing needs in local communities. Through this team, I learned about Dr. Farmer’s research in Belize and quickly grew interested in her work. While I was not able to travel abroad and conduct research in Belize over the summer, a similar premise of work could be applied in Northwest Arkansas. Thus, I followed the design thinking methodology, which focuses on empathizing with one’s audience, defining a need, ideating a solution, prototyping the solution, and testing the solution, to a target audience of local artists and producers. Along with several students from Enactus, over the previous semester, I conducted interviews with local vendors to identify pain-points related to their business. Next, I brainstormed ways to reduce inefficiencies in their business. This was the focus of the previous semester, and this semester, I focused on applying the information I had gathered.

During this semester, I revisited the results of the interviews I had conducted last semester. As I began ideating a prototype which would ideally meet the main needs presented in these interviews, I faced several challenges. First, the theme of the interviews pointed towards local vendors’ desire to market and advertise themselves and their products. At first, I believed that the product that could best serve this need was a multi-vendor marketplace, similar to eBay. However, this solution would have required extensive time to develop, and I also came to the realization that this service may not be utilized, as many of these services already exist. While my mentor was really focused on community development in Belize, I was able to attend one of her classes this semester where she taught me how to identify the inefficiencies of a problem and how to address it. After much thought, I realized that a tool that markets the vendor and sends users to their personal sites may be more advantageous than creating an entirely new site to sell products. This better fit in with the results of the interviews, as many of the local vendors noted that they did not want another selling platform but would rather desire a place to promote themselves and bring more users to them.

From these findings, several students from Enactus and I created a website prototype for vendors. The process was sometimes tedious, as we needed to recreate the website on another website building tools after realizing more functionalities would be needed and the current tool was not sufficient. Additionally, we had to capture the idea of promoting a vendor in the most user-friendly way. Our design included a simple home page with a feature page of the vendor, category filters by the type of product, and a vendor’s profile page which included a picture of them, their products, and links to where they sold their products. This project certainly included many revisions and step-backs to re-orient myself and my team members to the overall goal of the project. However, this really did fit in with the concept of design thinking, which is not a linear succession of events, but rather a series of understanding the problem, creating solutions to those problems, and prototype after prototype. Thanks to my mentor, I was better able to understand the complex nature of a problem and the various externalities which can impede a simple solution.

The next steps for the project are to include vendors on the site and receive their feedback on how their business needs can be better served through the service. Additionally, I am hoping to bring my new understanding of design thinking to Dangriga, Belize this next summer. After this experience, I can confidently say that I am more knowledgeable about the design thinking process, including but not limited to, identifying a problem, understanding the needs of the target audience, creating a solution which seeks to resolve inefficiencies, and constantly revisiting the solution to determine whether it meets the identified needs.