House2Home Website
The Problem
Have you ever found it difficult to find the perfect decor to make your new place feel like home? House2Home focuses on decorative products and accessories. From their user surveys, they found that many of their customers who recently moved to a new place want to buy items to personalize their living space but are not confident about doing it on their own. We want to provide a sort of home design “starter kit” website to provide a way to make customers feel comfortable about decorating their new home or apartment while keeping within their budget.
My Role
I worked through a design sprint process involving ideation, design, prototyping, and usability testing.
Design Sprint — Day 1
Day 1 was spent understanding the problem and target user and drafting a map displaying a possible end-to-end user experience.
Persona
The persona for the House2Home design sprint is named Ally who is 23 years old. She graduated from college a month ago and moved into her first rented apartment in Chicago. At first, she was excited to decorate her first "own" space, but after a while of setting aside time to shop for decorations and browsing Pinterest she became frustrated. She struggled to find the right items that would look good together and create the "look" she wants. She also couldn’t find out how to stay within her budget and only use smaller accessories as opposed to making big renovations. Her goal is to give her apartment a quick “facelift” without needing too many items and keep to her budget and desired “look”.
Map
Design Sprint — Day 2
Lightning Demos
On Day 2 of the design sprint, I conducted a lightning demo and examined solutions that competitors have produced for problems similar to ours. I looked at apps and websites like Instagram, LikeToKnowIt, and Wayfair which all provide options for users to shop a desired look. Wayfair also provides suggestions to other similar looks that users may like or other similar-looking items with other prices.
Crazy 8 Sketches
Next, I examined the map created from Day 1 and decided that the most critical screen was the one with the prioritized list of items within the user’s preferences. This is because it is the most complex step in the flow and is the one that will help the user complete the desired outcome, which is to find the budget-friendly items that can help them create the look they want in their apartment or home. Once I selected the most critical screen, I did a Crazy 8s sketch exercise to try out different variations of that screen. The solution sketches were created after that.
Crazy 8 Sketch Exercise
Solution Ideation
Of the 8 Crazy 8 Sketches, I found one that I thought would best help customers feel comfortable about decorating their new home or apartment and keep within their budget. There were also some fun icons and organizational elements in another one of the Crazy 8 Sketches that I liked and thought would improve the user experience, so I decided to combine parts of the two sketches to create the solution.
Solution Ideation
Design Sprint — Day 3
Storyboard Process
On Day 3, I created the storyboard that includes the solution sketches from Day 2. For the storyboard, I took the Day 2 solution sketches and ideas from the Day 1 map, making sure that every aspect of the map was incorporated into the storyboard. To do this, I had to add a function for filtering searches by budget amount and number of desired items and create what the user would see at the end of the flow when they have accomplished their task. I took different ideas from the inspiration obtained from the lightning demos in Day 2 to finalize each step of the storyboard.
Design Sprint — Day 4
My final design idea is that a user would go on the homepage and search for either a desired look or item. The user can filter the search by indicating their budget and number of items they would like. After the user selects the search button, the website will bring them to a results page of looks that are related to the look that they searched for or a results page of looks containing the item they searched for. If the user selects a look, they will be able to see more about the look, the items within the look that can be purchased, and a suggested set of items that they can purchase which are within their indicated budget and desired number of items. They can then choose to keep exploring or add the items to their cart and checkout. Sketch was used for the design of the screens and InVision was used for the prototype.
Design Sprint — Day 5
On Day 5, I interviewed 5 users to test the usability of the design prototype. With each test, I started each participant at the homepage, walked them through the search process, and observed as they found items for their home and added them to their cart.
Major findings include:
Copy needs to be improved on all screens
For the results page, a couple of users were not expecting to see interior design looks in the results page but were expecting to find items. This issue could potentially be solved by making changes to the wording of the homepage so that it is more clear to users that they will be finding looks in the results.
Having images on the homepage to prompt users to do some exploring of different looks might also help users understand that they will be finding set looks that they can buy.
Half of the users indicated that they wanted to see text or some kind of preview for each look in the results page so that they could get an idea of what they can buy before they click into the look.
More visuals and larger, easier-to-see images
This give users a better idea of what they are buying and what it might look like in their own homes.
Add a delete option for the items in the cart
One user brought this up and also did realize that they could just set the quantity drop-down to zero in order to delete it. This could be something to consider to do A/B testing and see if a delete button would be necessary.
Other suggestions unrelated to usability:
Add more text and descriptions to items and looks
Half of the users wanted to see a user profile so that they could save looks that they liked
Outcomes and Lessons Learned
At the end of the design sprint, I learned a lot about how to work quickly to come up with ideas and create a solution. Although there is still much to improve upon, the website can benefit user lives because it allows them to easily find multiple decor items that go well together. It also helps users filter their options based upon their budget or desired number of items.
A lot of great findings were discovered through usability testing on Day 5. Users really liked the simplicity of the website and the interactive details. Next steps would include editing the copy on all screens, making it clearer for users to understand, adding more descriptive text, including more pictures and making them larger, and doing more testing to see if an item delete button would be helpful in the shopping cart.