House to home is an e-commerce app that sells home decoration items and accessories. It is a new start-up that wants to make it easier for people to decorate their new homes and apartments on a budget.
As a UIUX designer, I was brought on to run a design sprint to quickly create a possible solution.
This project is done by a modified Google Design Sprint for a duration of five days. It is a very quick pace process and aimed to test out whether the minimum viable product could solve the problems.
- Project research plan
- Map out problems
- End to end user map
- Lightening demos
- Crazy 8 sketches
- Comparison and decide
- Solution sketch
- User storyboard
- Prototyping MVPs
- User interviews
- Synthesis
Targeted users are people who recently moved and will need to decorate their apartments or houses. The problems that they are facing include:
Don’t know how to pick the right decorations from hundreds of items
Don’t know whether the items could work together
Difficult to stay on budget
First of all, all the possible issues that the users would run into during the process are listed out, and thus brainstorm out the solutions. This could help me identify what is the most critical problems to solve, and also if there's a solution that could be used to solve multiple issues.
After listing out the issues the users are facing, I jump right into mapping out the possible solutions for the users. The targeted user, would like to accomplish the goal of purchasing a few home decorations for the new housse. He/she would start from opening the App, and end at checking out the items. There are many ways to help him/her to achieve the goal.
On time
Help users to find the right home deco-rations, quickly.
On budget
Help users to stay on budget
On groups
Help users to buy groups of items that work well together.
I tested a handful of products to get inspiration and knowledge of what’s working or not, which include:
- Ikea Place
- Houzz
- Joss & Main
- Pinterest
Most of the home shopping Apps, such as Ikea, Houzz and Joss&Main, arrange the flow like a department store. Users need to go through multiple layers upfront to start the search, and yet the contents they find are not tailored to users’ needs. One needs to have a clear idea in mind to begin the search, and the App is not helping the process.
Pinterest, on the contrary, provides a pretty good solution. Users search for products based on images they like, so the selection is narrowed down.
I enjoyed the process of Crazy 8, which is to produce sketches in a very short time frame. By doing this, I can focus on my thoughts without overthinking the reasoning and scenarios. Not all of the sketches can provide a reasonable solution, however, one or a few may work, or work in a hybrid way.
The core of the App is to help users to find the right decor and stay on budget. The process has to be simple and intuitive to help users to stay focused on finding the decorations they like, instead of being distressed by the process. Thinking from the users standpoint, they would like to see the items in fewer steps, instead of a lengthy process. Therefore, I landed on the solution of providing a quiz to the users to help them narrow down the options. This is an anticipatory design to help users to see the items they need. Below is a sketch for the critical screens.
The solution is to provide users with an engaging onboarding process to find out the true fit decorations for their new homes. The process starts with three questions to narrow down the options, and provide what the users would like to see to get them engaged.
Decorating one’s home is a personal and intimate process, which deserves attention on providing tailored recommendations, instead of an all-inclusive department store.
The onboarding process is important to get the users familiar with the App’s functions and set them on the right track. More importantly, it can set up the right mood for the users to enjoy the App, evoking positive emotions around decorating the house.
“The process evokes positive emotions and I think I can find something nice for the house”
“There should be more hints and context for the landing pages - related to the functions of the App”
“The on boarding process: the images are beautiful, which makes the user feels a nice experience.”
In general the users enjoy the onboarding process and think it is useful. However, they are looking for more context and information that help them understand they are in the process, and looking for hints of App’s functions
Provide upfront information to remind users they are in the onboarding process. Add more information to the pages to relate to the App’s function, such as adding hints of App generated recommendations, the scale bar of budget, and recommending groups of items.
The quiz purpose is to help narrow down options for the users, and provide personalized experience for them to shop on the App. Most home decoration apps serve as a department store where users have to go through layers of department to hunt for items.
“Like the quiz idea to help find items. But most of the time I would start from browse around - I prefer to see everything together. ”
“The quiz seems only functional when there are not many products available - such as buying a face cleaner on Sephora. ”
“I like to have the style questions upfront to help me get on a tailored experience. I like to see the App evolve around my likes.”
Even though users express positive feedbacks on the style quiz idea to help them narrow down the options, most of them, still clicked at the ‘Browse Around’ button to start the task.
It is important to note that user appreciate the idea of a personalized experience.
Some users are eager to see the items upfront instead of going through the questions.
Providing options for the user - to start with a quiz or browse around, is a good approach.
However, whether the style quiz could resolve users' need to find items quickly, needs more testing. There could be refinement on the UI design to guide users to this particular function.
House To Home app sells mostly smaller decoration items, which usually would be more effective when matched in a group. The grouping recommendation would recommend 3-4 items that work well together, to bring the decoration value to users home. And the users can save time on hunting multiple items, and also knowing the items are pre-selected and matched well in style.
“Need more hints on the groups of items - under-standing which one is available to buy.”
“There should be more context for the recommendation page such as multiple pieces put together for you.”
“This is a userful function especially if I am shopping for the new home. Nice to see things pre-selected together.”
It is observed that the users do not get the idea of items grouping together at the beginning. Yet when they find out this intention, they like the approach. They express positive feedback on seeing items pre-selected and match together.
Provide more context and information on the recommen-dation landing page. Refine the design on how to let the users know the intention of groups of items. Users need clear direction on what items can buy in the page. And they are also looking for the option of buying items individually.
Based on the usability testing, the users are on board with the minimum viable products, including the on boarding process, recommendation in groups and setting a price. The proposed solution of style quiz to help users to find their needs still needs more iteration and testing to validate.
For the next steps, it would be further iterating and testing the proposed solutions, developing the complete user flows and edge cases, and complete the UI design to set the right tone for the App.
