UI/UX Design
Case Study
Discover the ideal decor for your home!
Timeline: 5 Days
Tools: Figma, Pencil, paper, zoom
Role: UI/Ux Designer & Researcher
Overview:
Research Highlights:
User Insights:
House2Home is an e-commerce website that sells home decor items and accessories. It aims to help people decorate their new homes and apartments. In the exciting journey of moving into a new home or apartment, individuals often find themselves yearning to transform their living spaces into personalized sanctuaries. However, the process of styling a home can be both exhilarating and daunting. Many new homeowners express a desire to purchase multiple items to add a personal touch to their space but lack the confidence or know-how to do it effectively.
Objectives:
Understanding this common challenge, House2Home was conceived as a comprehensive solution to empower individuals embarking
on the adventure of home customization. Whether it's a first-time homeowner or someone moving to a new city, House2Home is designed
to be the go-to platform that not only offers a wide array of curated home essentials but also provides the guidance and support needed to
make personalized styling choices with confidence.
Design Constraints:
Mapping:
Wayfair:
Day 1 - Understand/Map
Decision:
-The solution should be designed as a website or a web app and focus on a big screen like a desktop or laptop.
-Focus on helping users who want a ‘starter kit’ of multiple products to decorate a new house or apartment.
-Most House2Home products are between $10 - $50.
-House2Home focuses on decoration products only, they don't sell furniture, appliances or large pieces.
-Maria is trying to stick to a budget while buying some stuff to make her new apartment more stylish.
-Dan is overwhelmed that all the stuff he is buying to decorate his room will look good all together.
-Anna is worried about things looking good in her living room, not just in photos online.
-Deena knows the look she wants but doesn’t know how to pull it off with the right products.
-Lindsey reads blogs and other articles for tips but needs help to make it within her budget.
-Ron wants the place to look good but doesn’t want to spend so much time searching for items.
-Silvia wants to maximize style impact within her price range.
-Renata does a lot of browsing but has trouble choosing things to buy.
-Lauren looks for ways to balance quality, quantity, and budget.
-Taylor moves pretty often and wants to stick to smaller items.
-Users want to quickly transform their living space with quality home decor items without needing to shop for lots of individual items.
-Budget is the main concern for most users, they want to find decorative items within their budget and also want to know if those items would look good in their space.
-The navigation and layout of the website should be very clear and precise as the user doesn’t want to waste a lot of his time browsing.
-To sum up, they are looking for ways to balance the quality, quantity and budget in decorating their space.
After finding these insights I created a few possible end-to-end user experiences for the persona ‘Ally’:
Lightning Demos:
Storyboard:
High Fidelity Mock Ups:
Day 2 - Sketching
The "House 2 Home" website is the challenge for my design sprint. In search of ideas, I did some research and looked through two of my favorite websites for home décor: Pottery Barn and Wayfair.
Pottery Barn:
On the “Pottery Barn” website, shopping by holiday theme, by rooms and, by prod recommendation accordingly was impressive. Also their ‘design advice’ and ‘customer service help’ are very helpful and assuring.
On the “Wayfair” website, I found some interesting layouts and interfaces. They have organized everything in relevant categories like lighting, decor & pillows etc. The concept of mix and match and functional designs for decorating the house was incredible.
Crazy 8’s Sketching:
After completing the lightning demo, I worked on sketching different possible solutions using Crazy 8's method.
Solution Sketch:
The reason I chose the solution sketch above is that it makes it easier for the user to find solutions that fit their budget and style. Additionally, "Designing a virtual room" is an option for a better look at the product.
Created the storyboard with 12 screens to cover the full experience of the flow for ‘Find your Style’ before working on the prototype
Day 3 - Decide
Usability Testing:
Day 5 - Testing
Day 4 - Prototype
By the fourth day of the sprint, my sketches and ideas were ready to be put into practice. Seeing the sketches come to life during the high-fidelity screen prototyping and creation process is always exciting.
Using the Figma tool, I created 19 high-fidelity screens based on Day 3 sketches, along with an interactive prototype.
I conducted usability test with five potential users to validate my design choices by asking simple tasks:
Finding their own style in decor items.
Customizing and ordering decoration kit.
Usability Test Results:
Since the prototype was intuitive and easy to understand, the test was quick with minimal issues. Most of the feedback was similar from each participant. In the overall process, each user was able to get through the flow with no issues. I did identify a number of small design issues and a few functional improvements in iterations:
-Just like the user is able to remove the items from the kit, they may also need the option to add new items to the kit.
-Knowing approximately when the product will be delivered before adding the items.
-The user felt that they want the items as per their room size.
Conclusion:
The overall experience was fun to design something that I could test and validate within a week with users. Having a limited amount of time pushed me to make quick decisions and come up with creative solutions.
Next Steps:
To improve this website further, I would iterate the design based on user feedback and test again until I am confident they had been resolved. In addition, I would like to expand the design functionality to allow users to design virtual rooms.