Capstone Project: PPG
How might PPG support small painting business owners with their challenges and build long-term partnerships with them
Overview
🖇 Project Details​
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Timeline: January 2022 - Present
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Team: UX Researcher, joined by one other UX Researcher and three UX Designers
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Client: PPG
📌 Goal
Understand small painting businesses, which are one of our client's important customer segments for architectural paint, and find opportunities to support them with a digital service
📌 Impact (so far!)
Challenged our client's biggest, high-risk assumption about small painting businesses and their problems (paint estimation is not the problem! ðŸ¤), reframed the way they saw the problem space, and discovered new problems that could offer valuable partnership opportunities for PPG
CONTEXT
PPG is an American Fortune 500 company and one of the world's largest suppliers of paints, coatings, and specialty materials.
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Small painting businesses (fewer than 5 painters) account for about 40% of the total volume of architectural paint purchased in the U.S., which made them a very important customer segment for PPG.
Size of Business
GOAL
How might we help PPG support these small painting businesses with their challenges and build long-term partnerships with them?
To figure this out, we had to deeply understand small painting businesses and their unmet needs and challenges. Here's what we did.
DESK RESEARCH
We had to first gain a basic understanding of the space we were about to explore. Most of us had never held a paintbrush, let alone paint a wall!
WHAT: What does PPG do? Who are its main competitors? Who are its customers and what do they do? What is the paints and coatings industry like?
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HOW: Familiarized ourselves with the domain using a combination of a competitive analysis, industry and trend analysis, and technology research as well as secondary research on PPG and painting businesses
We learned that compared to its competitors, PPG was not catering well to the small painting businesses, primarily due to its relatively small number of brick-and-mortar stores. This project could be an opportunity to make up for this gap in the touchpoint.
PPG STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEW
As we were doing desk research, we reached out to various domain experts at PPG to gain insight into PPG's customers, including their characteristics and behaviors.
WHAT: What are PPG’s different customer segments for architectural paint and their main characteristics? How big is the userbase for its digital services? What might be preventing customers from using its digital services?
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HOW: Conducted interviews with people in the digital team, digital marketing team, and digital partnerships & innovation team at PPG
We learned that digital services for purchasing paint existed but only a very small portion of PPG’s customers were using them.
GUERRILLA RESEARCH
With the knowledge we gathered, it was time to get our feet wet with quick, low-cost research.
WHAT: What do painting business owners do day-to-day? Who are the different stakeholders involved? How do they estimate the amount of paint needed for a job?
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HOW:
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Visited local paint stores, including PPG, Sherwin Williams, and Home Depot, and asked the employees about how painting contractors decide on the paint brand and product, order paint, and estimate paint
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Called local painting businesses and learned about their day-to-day work and paint estimation process
We learned that painting business owners had the biggest say in deciding the paint product and brand for residential projects. To get a fuller picture, we needed to understand the overall project flow, only a part of which is paint estimation.
USER INTERVIEWS
Now that we had a basic understanding of our target users, we conducted more structured and focused interviews to gain their perspectives.
WHAT: How do they run their business? How do they manage their painting jobs? How do they do estimates? What are they concerned or stressed about? What challenges do they face?
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HOW:
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Recruited painting business owners through our own network, reaching out via LinkedIn, and cold calling
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Learned about their business operation, estimation methods, and project workflow, as well as their most recent challenges
... However, one of the challenges we faced was recruiting painting business owners. Our target users were very busy and difficult to get hold of. While looking for ways to overcome this challenge, we came across the Painting Contractor Association's annual Expo!
IMMERSION RESEARCH
The PCA Expo is a national event for painting contractors, during which painting contractors can connect with one another and attend education sessions. We saw the expo as a great opportunity to talk to many painting business owners and connect with them for future recruiting.
WHAT: How do they estimate and quote jobs? What are the biggest challenges they face? What financial challenges do they face? Is paint estimation really a financial risk?
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HOW:
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Started with more casual, rapport-building questions and gradually transitioned to our research questions ("Tell me about the last time something about your business gave you a headache?")
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Walked up and started a conversation with as many attendees as possible and got their contact information for future recruiting
We learned the 3 biggest types of challenges that painting business owners faced: hiring and managing employees to deliver the work that they promised to customers, managing their customers’ expectations and distrust, and running a profitable business.
HOMEOWNER INTERVIEW
Managing customers, especially dealing with their sense of distrust, was one of our target users' biggest challenges. As the homeowners were their most important stakeholders, we decided to interview the homeowners.
WHAT: What is the homeowners' experience throughout the project? How do they perceive painting businesses?
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HOW:
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Tested their response to different types of estimates
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Used directed storytelling to learn about their most recent experience with getting their house painted by a painting contractor and their perception of painting businesses
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We learned the reason why the homeowners found it difficult to trust the painting businesses, which was affected by their past experience with contractors and the stigma around painting contractors as well as the contractor industry overall and how they perceived the nature of the work.
INSIGHTS & REFRAMING
We gathered, aligned on, and refined the most important insights that we've discovered through all our past research.
Paint estimation? It's not a problem! ðŸ¤
1. Estimating the amount of paint for a project is not a major source of risk for small painting businesses.
Wait... Estimates are not "estimates"? 😮
2. Both small painting business owners and their customers tend to treat estimates as more definitive than they truly are.
What challenges do they face? 🤔
3. Small painting business owners approach the running of their business like painters, not business experts.
4. Hiring and managing a painting crew drives business growth but presents a significant source of liability to small painting business owners.
5. The relationship between the painting businesses and their customers starts from a place of distrust.
Who finds these challenges even more challenging? 😧
6. Novice small painting business owners have a unique set of needs and more demanding challenges compared to experienced small painting business owners.
Wait a minute. All of these challenges can be addressed through better estimation.
Estimation is key! 🔑
Reframing: Estimation is a critical process that can be leveraged to help painting business owners address the most significant challenges they face in customer, employee, and financial management.
PRESENTATION
We invited executives from PPG to present our insights. Our goal was to share the most valuable insights from our research in a compelling, engaging, and memorable way and reframe how they thought about the problem space.
How can we not only make the experience fun but also get the audience to put themselves in the shoes of painting business owners and empathize?
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It needs to be experiential and interactive.
NEXT STEPS
Our work is not done yet! Our client is on board with and excited about where we're headed. We will use what we've learned from research to iteratively build and test something that can both address the important needs of small painting business owners and create value for PPG.
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So how might we leverage the estimation process to help (novice) small painting business owners overcome these challenges? More to come!
