Proposal - OFN Product Overview

[lin_d_hop]

Hi everyone,

I would like to share with y’all a proposal for the OFN Product Overview - from henceforth called the Product Map.

What is a Product Map?

Great Question! Probably it is the kind of term used in different places to mean different things. Here we mean it as a high level overview of the product. It doesn’t have all the details, but it shows at a high level what the OFN tool does.

Why have a Product Map?

OFN is a complex product. It’s complex for users. Its complex for support teams. It’s complex for devs, testers, designers, product teams. Yeah, complex.

Having a basic high level overview of the product will help us in a bunch of ways:

• For new comers to the project we can send them the Product Map to help them get their bearings in understanding what OFN is and what it does
• For support teams, it can help us to tag and group support requests so we can start to use this as a metric in deciding what to work on next. We’re not scalable if our support teams become overloaded.
• From a technical perspective it might help us understand the unpacking of the monolith
• From a product perspective it can help us to view the product as a whole and prioritise

Convinced? Great!

You can find the draft product map here. And also in this wee image:

Note that across each area of the Product Map we have four key areas of focus:

Next Steps

1. It would be great to hear from all the support folks, instance mangers, devs, testers, designers, product folks… just the whole community as to whether this map matches your ideas about the OFN Product as it stands today. Please do suggest anything that doesn’t feel or look right, anything missing, anything superfluous.
2. Once we’re all in agreement for our v1 (we ain’t etching this in stone. It can be changed as we learn) then we can make a prettier version if we fancy
3. We can then think about the best way to translate this into Support tags and Github tags. We can think about how we can start to collect data and use this as a tool in our understanding, analytics and prioritisation processes.

A freaking lot of people need to be tagged in this

Support: @lbwright22 @chez @EmilyRogers @JessC @Jen
Instance Managers: @tschumilas @NickWeir @Kirsten @MyriamBoure @lauriewayne1
Delivery: @luisramos0 @maikel @Matt-Yorkley @apb @sauloperez @filipefurtado @Rachel @Erioldoesdesign @Jana

… please tag others in your circles!

[luisramos0]

Awesome work, I think this is very important!

On the Shopper side I am missing Content/CMS, I’d put it together with discovery maybe?
In some other ecommerce solutions I have seen Checkout separated from Shopfront as a separate section and put together with payment methods. These two things together are big and closely related

[lin_d_hop]

I like this suggestion @luisramos0. Also I think issues like this one point out that checkout can and should be a separate product area

[tschumilas]

just fyi and wondering on timeline for this. OFN-CAN would like to consider our recent covid experience with farmers markets and contribute to this draft vision. We are just in the middle of finalizing another funding proposal and want that out the door first. Is a 2 week timeline for our input possible? If not we will adjust priorities here - but just checking.

[lin_d_hop]

Hi @tschumilas
This is a live process and will be itereating as we go. I think we’ll find the map with adapt a little when we start to map issues to it. It will shift when we add new features. Don’t think that now is the only chance to comment. It is just the first chance to comment.

If you are happy for us to continue working before you take a look then great

[tschumilas]

This is amazing work - so helpful just to have this in one place.
One area that keeps arising in Canada is shoppers looking to buy from multiple separate shops more easily. I’m not at a point of suggesting solutions - I’m just passing on the need. We get asked this often. Producers are partially responding to consumers be setting up shared drop spots (like informal neighbourhood farmers markets). But customers would like more streamlined shopping across the group. I don’t see this direction generally in the product vision. I think the product vision tends to reflect the formal economy (producers, hubs). But post-covid here, we are seeing a strong demand and interest in food distribution in a more informal economy - where there is no ‘hub’ type business. If there is a way to discuss this as part of the product vision discussions, we’d be very appreciative. (it impacts shopping carts, it impacts our ‘groups’ feature, it impacts how we see drop spots…)

[lin_d_hop]

Thanks @tschumilas

The product map was created to map things that exist (even if they exist badly eg vouchers & pay with credits). It is not a place to talk about new features.

As dropshipping is a wishlist item it would be interesting to create a wishlist for it for discussions.

[lin_d_hop]

v1.2 Including Checkout as a separate part of the Shopper Experience.

[JessC]

Awesome, thanks for circulating this!
Within shopping experience -> discovery, what about something simple like navigating between the shops, producers and groups pages? Not sure if I’m understanding the structure of this map correctly but just thinking about when a shopper is discovering on OFN - they may browse through the shop/producer/group pages looking for specific products or just to window shop. (Example, I may get a query in support about navigating the groups page, where would I tag/file that inquiry to in this map?)

[lin_d_hop]

Here is Product Map v1.3 with @JessC’s very useful note included

[Jana]

This is super useful !!

I used this map as a base for mapping the wishlist items on these product areas
in a more visual, (rough) sitemap way, having different levels, e.g. for Admin

1. Product Management

• 1.1 Product List
  • 1.1.1 Create/Edit Products
  • 1.1.2 Product Variants
  • …
• 1.2 Inventory

and also mapping the sections more along a user journey (for shopper side).

I detected some features missing, not sure how detailed this should be for the purpose of tags for support requests/bugs.

Have a look here and see what might be useful to include.
New things are on blue post-its.

Miro: the collaborative whiteboard platform for distributed teams

Also while doing same for the Admin side, I had some questions:

Do we split Enterprise Management (how currently named in product & user guide) in

• Enterprise Admin Management (=managing my own Enterprise, i.e. Settings, Payment Methods Handling User Permissions, Profile Management etc.) and
• Enterprise Management with other Enterprises(=my Suppliers)? -> This currently does not have its own place from a (admin) user perspective

Also I missed Tags? Not entirely sure where to put them

• from a product / site map view would be under Enterprise Management > Settings > Tags
• but from a Use Case Perspective I put them more under Customer Management (Customer Specific Pricing, Product Visibility…)

Also I would split Offer Management, and separate

Product Management

• Create
• (Bulk) Edit
• Product Variants
• Filter/Search Product
• Inventory

from Tax and Enterprise Fees / Commissions since that’s more “Enterprise/Shop Administration” (II don’t have a better phrasing for this now) or maybe together with Enterprise Management?

Some more questions on the product map items on orange post-its to not make this post ENDLESS

[Kirsten]

is there any value in potentially looking at if/how this maps to DFC? Are there any language / concepts that it would be useful or us to map to @Rachel?

[Rachel]

@Kirsten good question. I must confess that I now start to have DFC biases especially on the portion of the ontology we are trying to map OFN on. For example I see value in separating the product from the offer (how the product is sold). And I think this why there is the term “offer” on the map #busted.

[The DFC vocabulary for those who don’t know: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/KzmDJ63oH6uLhA7z9qgknOEwdEGWQRWIVkJFvFOtTGSEwyf9XjCo44evKK1a4prG4pbUkaPCKwJQAGNaG_9SkYLgd_dABOvkXetf9xJNo4kXtjliAZT28WlL8VwBi8nndUA_VWUc ]

If there are other aspect we want to be inspired with, I have planed a deep ontology dive with Myriam in January where I should get up to speed. Which will hopefully lead to more documentation on the topic.

I would say let’s move forward with the current proposal for now and see in the future if we want to change something? Maybe it will only be around naming stuff differently.

[Jana]

Hello all,

here is the V2 of the product overview, including some more features and a bit of restructuring.

Additionally to the table version, we have a slightly more detailed version of the product map on a Miro Board that came up alongside the work on mapping the wishlist items to the respective product areas.
(To avoid confusion: the board contains a “lean version” of the product map on the left side as well as the wishlist items mapping on the right side of the board).

For example this allows us to be more precise with hierarchies, e.g. Shopfront > Product Display > Price Transparency features and have indicate which features or parts of the product do currently exist already, and which are in development or inception.

Miro: the collaborative whiteboard platform for distributed teams

The purpose of this map is to have a dynamic “inventory” of the product that can easily be adjusted.
Also it´s an attempt of visualizing how features of shopper experience and admin experience are connected.

Additional to the use cases Lynne was pointing out above it can for example also be used to create a heat map where biggest pain points are.

Next Steps

As we did already one round of feedback and in order to move forward and get this map in use, feedback until next Wednesday, Jan 20th highly appreciated !
Please do suggest anything that doesn’t feel or look right, anything missing, anything superfluous.

Again, this V2 is not set in stone and can (and should be) easily adjusted.

We can then think about the best way to translate this into Support tags and Github tags. We can think about how we can start to collect data and use this as a tool in our understanding, analytics and prioritisation processes.

Support: @lbwright22 @chez @EmilyRogers @JessC @Jen
Instance Managers: @tschumilas @NickWeir @Kirsten @MyriamBoure @lauriewayne1
Delivery: @maikel @Matt-Yorkley @apb @sauloperez @filipefurtado @Rachel @Erioldoesdesign @lin_d_hop
… please tag others in your circles!

[NickWeir]

Big thanks to Jana, Lynne and all the product team for all your work on this. It looks great. Others who might have a view on this are @DavieP @Sophie_Duponcheel_BE @satya @Bevan @hhomann @thomaz @berniemabbs @Bato @rafat-khashan @romale @DavidGiovannini @hernansedano

[chez]

Thanks everyone for the work so far! The Aus team have taken a quick look at V2 and just have a few clarification questions.

1. Discoverability would we include under ‘search’ anything around delivery and pick up location based search? If not, it would be great to have a subheading for this as its a key question we get from potential platform users, existing users, and shoppers.
2. Noting since the first version, the sub title for packing and distribution has dropped out of OC management but we get a lot of enquiries from hubs re this. Would it still sit under OC Management or do we need to include it again?
3. Would it be possible to include a subheading for ‘reports’ under Admin Experience separate to where it already appears under Data & Interoperability? In this way we could differentiate between UX challenges with the reporting interface (its hard to use) and data availability (I need X piece of data that isn’t currently in the reports).

@RonellaG

[Jana]

Thanks for your feedback @chez.

The purpose of the product map was to map the current state of the product, its reflects the features that are already in place (otherwise we would have to include many more things) to give an overview what OFN currently offers.

Following this “rule” we decided to have

2. Packing & Distribution

not included in the table form anymore, but if you have a look at the detailed version in Miro, you see it´s still there but labelled as not handled by OFN software

Following the same rule, you are absolutely right regarding

2. Would it be possible to include a subheading for ‘reports’ under Admin Experience

Reports should be part of Admin experience, will include it both table and miro board.

Regarding

1. Discoverability would we include under ‘search’ anything around delivery and pick up location based search?

Search we have at multiple places, in the table form we cannot include more than 2 hierarchy levels, so we decided to group search. Is the usecase you referring to covered in the detailed view or under which heading would you propose to include it?

[tschumilas]

I just want to double check something - quite important here. We are getting loads of user requests for help with editing orders. I see that editing orders is on the map - but I just want to make sure that ‘editing’ includes ‘adding to’ an order. Its an existing feature (adding a variant to an order) - but next to impossible to do for larger hubs. I just want to make sure we consider adding a variant as an edit to an order. Am I correct?

[lin_d_hop]

@tschumilas Yes you are correct.

@chez and @Jana I wonder if it makes sense to have the reports data and reports UX in totally separate categories? I think we’ll find this might make it harder to track priorities. What if we include UI and UX issues in the Reports section of Data and Interoperability?

The rationale for this is that for the Data and Interoperability work our main goal is to have a cohesive process across the UI and API. UX features of the /reports page form part of the picture of a cohesive data strategy. Yes they are ‘Admin Experience’. In reality all of ‘Data & Interoperability’ is a kind of ‘Admin Experience’…

[Jana]

Also true. Agree, that we do not need to have them in completely separate sections.
The reason why I would have added reports to Admin Experience is because when we did the V2 of the Product Map we tried to reflect the way of how the user currently “sees” the product features (vs. use cases perspective) and reports is a product section that is “visible” to the admin user whereas API & Insights are not.
But fine either way. We can have
Data & Interoperability > Reports > Usability and
Data & Interoperability > Reports > Data Availability

So we can call the Product Map done put it in use