Lantern’s ‘Discovery Guide’
One of my favorite projects at Lantern, the Discovery Guide was a multi-faceted, cross-department project. For the first couple of years I worked at Lantern, I gathered tons of user feedback and research on how consumers shop, their anxieties, and the necessary information they need about products to add them to their cart.
In collaboration with product, analytics, category management, and marketing, we landed on the first version of our Discovery Guide which filtered the product catalog down to the exact products that a consumer will be interested in. We were then able to gather more information about our consumers to help inform product decisions moving forward. How many consumers are beginners vs. more advanced? What subcategories of edibles are most popular? etc.
The goal: Design an easy-to-use, straightforward onboarding and shopping experience for new cannabis consumers
My role: Lead Product Designer
Success criteria: Increase new address capture, add to cart, and conversion of Lantern users
Experience level
Understanding the experience level of the consumer would help us tailor the quiz to the individual as iterations moved forward. The idea here was to make sure we’re asking relevant questions to the person.
Ideally, a quiz that can adapt to the person’s experience level will create the perception of authority that we wanted.
Do you want to get high?
Many consumers we spoke with who are new to cannabis are always wary of getting too high (or high at all). I added this question to help communicate that there are products available on Lantern that won’t necessarily be psychoactive (CBD).
shop by feeling
Another insight into the cannabis consumer was that many of them don’t know the ins and outs of each product, but they do want to shop by a desired feeling or effect. This question was added to make it as simple as “I want to see products that will make me sleepy.”
Shop by category
Our data showed that ~90% of Lantern consumers stick to a single category when shopping. Flower people will be flower people. Edibles people will be edibles people.
This question helps filter out products that the users simply won’t care about which will reduce analysis paralysis.
Flower Format
User research indicated that many people have a routine and most beginners don’t know how to roll a joint. This question was to make sure new consumers to cannabis who want to smoke aren’t intimidated by needing to roll their own joints.
FLOWER TYPE
A lot of research has shown that Indica and Sativa don’t really. matter, but most consumers still communicate this way. We added this to explain how the genetics of a strain might affect your high.
Edibles format
Similar to the flower questions, if a consumer were to select edibles, we want to show the variety of edibles so they can shop specifics. Additionally, showing these subcategories help communicate the selection that Lantern offered.
Dosage
Edibles are generally the go-to format for new consumers. We needed to be super clear that a low dose is <5mg and a high dose is above that. One of the biggest mistakes beginner consumers make is consuming too many pieces without knowing how strong it’s going to be.