2021
Forage
A CONTEXT-FIRST ENTRY POINT TO RECREATIONAL CANNABIS
Omnichannel Product Discovery Platform
Brand Identity / Product Definition / Mobile WeB / Retail Kiosk / Recommendation Engine / Ecommerce / Admin Interface
2021
01. The Brief
In a competitive high-growth market, Columbia Care's rapid expansion created a fragmented tapestry of locally regulated retail brands.
Our assignment was to develop a discovery and acquisition platform to enable cohesion and cross-promotion across their expanding network.
02. The Approach
Through qualitative interviews, quantitative surveys, and data synthesis, we worked to validate our hypothesis that foundational beginners and casual consumer segments felt the need for a fresh approach to cannabis shopping.
By seeking to understand the operational needs and dependencies of new cannabis shoppers, we discovered that product attributes held very little relevance to users. Reorganizing the browsing and purchase flow around the user's mindset created an opportunity to translate mood into a more orienting browsing and selection experience.
Siberia developed a proprietary algorithm to power the product, using a dense set of data representing the thousands of different cannabis strains and the effect that they have when consumed.
By establishing a product roadmap early on, we were able to initially lay the groundwork for supporting the end-to-end experience while simultaneously concepting, testing and validating feature ideas that would differentiate the product in the long term.
"What I love about Columbia Care is the tech and innovation behind the company. It is always finding ways to create value for both its consumers and investors. The latest example of that is its cannabis discovery tool, Forage."
David Jagielski, The Motley Fool
03. The Output
A Personalized Cannabis Discovery & Recommendation Tool
We concepted, prototyped, and delivered a cannabis discovery tool designed to streamline the path-to-purchase by making product recommendations based on individual context.
Branding Forage
The branding of Forage relies on a custom iconography set and carefully selected mood color gradient to create an immersive and vibrant browsing experience.
Context-Oriented Discovery
We focused on the mood and use case context up front, developing a simple and novel onboarding experience that gathers information about the user's comfort level with cannabis products, alongside their desired outcome, to power the core recommendation engine.
Perfect Product Fit
From a dataset of thousands of strains, we are able to identify a subset that map to the users individual context and needs providing them with a short list of recommended products, rank ordered by their matching score.
Normalizing the Data
The platform ingests and normalizes multiple APIs to display comprehensive product details, inventory status and strain effects while providing maximum scalability and flexibility.
Physical to Digital
The system was designed and built to be optimized not just for mobile web, but for on-site retail kiosks as well. Mobile users can ad to cart, and submit their order from anywhere. They are notified once their order is ready and when they arrive at retail, their order is pre-packaged and waiting at the counter for check out. Walk-in customers can use the on-site kiosk to dial in their preferences, choose the right product for them, and send an expedited order to the back of the house to be packaged and hand-delivered at checkout.
04. Outcomes
Our work was launched in tandem with Columbia Care’s premier recreational cannabis brand, Cannabist. Since launch, Forage has been nationally recognized for redefining traditional dispensary shopping by delivering a seamless and personalized shopping experience to customers in-store, at home, and anywhere in between.
In the months following the launch of Forage success, Columbia Care announced an acquisition with Cresco Labs that will increase their combined footprint to 18 markets with over 150 dispensaries.