DIY Candle Kit Revamp

Overview

For my Agile Project Management class, I collaborated with a team of five UX designers over 12 weeks to improve our client’s DIY candle product.

Our client, Milwaukee Candle Company (MCC) is a local luxury candle company, who specializes in soy wax candles designed to evoke a sense of home and happiness. Our goal was to apply Agile methodologies and an Agile mindset to enhance their DIY Candle Kit experience.

The Challenge

MCC came to our team with the challenge to re-develop the DIY candle kit at-home experience, with the goal of:

"We want to re-develop this product into a DIY *Custom* Candle Kit that is convenient for us to pack, affordable for our customers, and allows them to blend their own custom scent at home."

The existing DIY Candle Kit faced several issues:

Inefficient Assembly: Each kit took over 10 minutes to pack due to a lack of custom packaging and fragile materials.
Limited Customization: Customers could not blend their own scents, making the experience feel less interactive.
Messy Unboxing: Packaging materials led to a cluttered and unrefined customer experience.
Pricing Constraints: The retail price was $50, with a vision to maintain pricing between $50-$60 while keeping material and labor costs between $12.50-$15.

My Role

As the Product Owner, I was responsible for:

Client Communication: Maintaining clear and consistent communication with the client.
Project Tracking: Managing the Trello board and ensuring tasks stayed on track.
Reporting: Providing updates to our professor, client, and team.

Trello board to track project progress

Initial Brainstorm Session

This activity was conducted after our team learned about the project to help us begin brainstorming on how we could approach this problem gathering insights and ideas from an all hands on deck perspective.

Brainstorming Activity

Addressing known Issues

Packaging Time

Had the opportunity to visit MCC and see their work environment and participate in the candle making process.
- This allowed us to gain awareness and start ideating on how we could reduce time-to-build.

Conducted market research to gather inspiration from other businesses' product organization:
- We looked into small businesses on social media
- Looked into warehouses like Costco and Sam's Club

From there we planned a day for the team to go in and organize the space
- Leading to open shelving for new products and more efficient packaging and de-cluttered space
  - Getting rid of empty boxes
  - Efficiently storing and labeling high traffic areas

Before: Lacking organization, products un-labeled and not clearly distinguished, no room for new products.

After: Clear organizational structure, more product visibility, empty shelving for new products.

Messy Unboxing

Current packaging: Grass-like cardboard packaging
Conducted market research on different types of packaging:
- Honeycomb packing paper- one sheet concept
- Custom paper form- Like an egg carton
- Compartmentalized box
Reached out to custom packaging suppliers for quotes
User interviews to understand experience
- Interview stats
- Key findings

Honeycomb packing paper

Custom compartmentalized box

Compostable Paper form

Limited customization

Designed elements for spin graph for customized scents
Gave ideas for how this could be implemented into the website
Gave price and supply breakdown for how we could implement this concept into the revamp
In addition to customization of the scents, we came up with the idea of a custom stamp to extend MCC's mission statement of being a local small business, taking inspiration from Lush's packaging custom packaging stickers.
User interviews to understand wants: pre-sharpened pencil

Price constraints

We requested an itemized breakdown of the current price to build kit.
From there, we looked into alternatives for every piece in the kit and gave rationales for changes.
- Such as reusable products like a honey comb
- Suggested re-cycle/re-use program

Costing

Microsoft Excel File containing itemized breakdown

Takeaways

Supply chain is not a fast or cheap process, especially when getting information for a small business.

In addition:

Our team re-wrote the diy kit creation instructions for clarity and user-friendliness. Reducing some aggressive language that attempted humor.
We conducted multiple rounds of usability tests with given target audience.
Wick design sketch guerilla testing

Agile Implementation

Our team fully embraced Agile principles through:

Daily Stand-Up Meetings: Ensuring continuous communication and task alignment.
Weekly MVP Presentations: Showcasing iterative progress to our client, professor, and Agile coach.
User Testing: Conducting multiple rounds of testing with both our team and external participants.
Supplier Communication: Researching and negotiating with suppliers to reduce costs.
Agile Coach: An agile coach from Northwestern Mutual came into class and coached us once a week giving feedback on our MVP Presentations.

Key Solutions & Deliverables

Reduced Packing Time: While we were unable to validate the goal of under 4 minutes, we made significant progress in streamlining assembly.
Enhanced Customization: Proposed new scent-blending options to make the kits more interactive.
Improved Unboxing Experience: Eliminated messy cardboard confetti and replaced it with specialized shipping paper.
Cost Optimization: Created cost spreadsheets and successfully reduced material expenses.
Warehouse Organization: Researched and suggested improvements for storage efficiency.
Instructional Redesign: Rewrote candle-making instructions to be more digestible and error-free.
Branding Touch: Designed custom stamps in Adobe Illustrator featuring employee faces and signatures for a personalized experience.

Outcomes & Reflections

This project was an incredibly rewarding experience that introduced and fueled my passion for Agile methodologies.

I particularly enjoyed:

Hands-On Client Collaboration: Visiting the candle shop and participating in the candle-making process.
Optimizing Workflow: Learning how to organize large projects efficiently using Trello.
Team Coordination: Keeping morale high, learning how to work in a larger team, and ensuring all stakeholders were aligned.
Time management:
Iterative Feedback:

At the end of the project, our client was extremely pleased with our work and appreciated the improvements we delivered. This experience strengthened my skills in product ownership, user experience research, and Agile project management, preparing me for future UX challenges.

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