Poppy Flowers

Overview

Before Poppy Flowers became the nation’s fastest-growing full-service wedding florist, the founder sought to validate the business idea through a five-part design sprint. The sprint aimed to demonstrate that couples want an easier way to shop for wedding flowers and that Poppy could market, source, and deliver the flowers in a way that would ease confusion.

Approach

To begin the sprint, I gathered research materials about the company’s business model, mission, purpose, and market opportunity. I also started a Notion document to catalog everything needed throughout the week. The plan contained five phases: Understand, Diverge, Converge, Prototype, and Test.

The Understand phase began by briefly reviewing the Notion document with the team, which consisted of one designer, a developer, Poppy’s founder, and the Poppy team. I then began interviewing potential customers, past wedding floral customers, and local wedding florists. Combining these two things informed the initial Critical Path (the ultimate user journey to prototype and test for customer viability).

I created an Assumptions board to capture any uncertainties, including how to validate or invalidate each assumption. A prototype-aided interview would validate customer-centric assumptions. Additional phone, video, and in-person interviews would validate or invalidate hypotheses about how the floral market operates from a local florist’s perspective. Additionally, the team distributed a Google Form comprised of the interview questions to the broader floral community to collect additional insight.

The Diverge phase aimed to generate as many ideas as possible in a safe environment through sketching sessions, followed by a final storyboarding session to inform the Critical Path. After the sketching sessions, each creator presented the sketches and discussed the group’s perspectives. The group decided on a concept and path, incorporating ideas from all the sketches.

During the Converge phase, the group decided on a critical path to prototype for testing. It would include arriving at the Poppy Flowers website, selecting color and style options, choosing logistics about the venue’s size and seating arrangement, and finally receiving the arrangement. The aim being to ensure even after delivery the customer understood how to move forward and where everything should go.

Outcome & Impact

We found potential customers most excited about Poppy Flowers’ approach to convenience, transparency, and quality. Clearly communicating a series of unknowns helped to make the purchaser more confident, and this ultimately led to the company’s success. By focusing on customers’ needs and validating the business idea, Poppy became the U.S.’s largest and fastest-growing wedding florist.