Timeline: 3 months
Type: Personal Project
Industry: Retail
Tools Used: Figma, Miro, POP
Solo End-to-end Designer
Shopping is an inevitable part of peoples’ lives. People like to shop in-person for a variety of reasons such as
Interacting with a product before purchasing 👁️
Getting purchases right away ⏳
Avoiding delivery charges 🛻
However, several pain points spoil the overall experience of shopping in-person, which in turn affects repeat business for brands.
Coming up with ways to engage the customer can both enhance user experience and give brands an enormous competitive advantage. Therefore, this is a crucial problem to solve.
SPREE is a fictional business and store that gives people an enjoyable shopping experience through a variety of well-thought out features and designs.
The following shows the process and steps that were followed throughout the course of this project.
Raydiant released a ‘State of the In-Store Experience’ report in 2021:
Market Research helped to confirm that the problem I’m addressing is a legitimate one.
User interviews were conducted with the objective of identifying pain points of shoppers at retail stores.
Target group:
Aged between 20 - 45 years
Go shopping in-person regularly
Interview Questions:
How often do you use your phone for convenience?
Walk me through the last time you went shopping.
On the days that you plan to shop, how do you plan what to buy?
Tell me about a successful as well as an unsuccessful shopping experience.
What are some of the struggles you face while shopping?
Conducting these interviews helped to understand the demographics, pain points and attitudinal mindset of shoppers. Using this data, I clustered similar themes which led the way for a structured evaluation.
Wireframes
After building a functional prototype, I did a round of usability testing on six users that belong to the targeted user group.
The objective was to ensure that the screens are intuitive and easy to use by:
🔎 Verifying that the mental model of the users matches the information architecture of the app
🔎 Uncovering usability issues and problems in the user flows
Usability Issue:
❓ Participants were unable to identify what the app is for just by looking at the Splash page.
❓ Most participants assumed it was an e-commerce app that can be used for online deliveries.
Solution:
✅ A simple change to the tagline helped to bring more clarity.
Usability Issues:
❓ ‘Rearrange and Find Best Route’ unclear as there was no clarity on what was being rearranged.
❓ Scrolling reveals store map. Most participants did not scroll, hence were unaware of this map.
Solutions:
✅ Reworded CTA to improve clarity.
✅ Map icon on the top right corner, which when clicked brings up the store map as an overlay.
The Importance of UX Writing - The presence of clearly articulated CTAs is crucial in facilitating user comprehension of the next steps to take. Through two rounds of usability testing, I was able to make necessary changes to improve clarity.
Scope Creep - It was tempting to introduce a lot of innovative features I had in mind, but had to remind myself to focus on just the main features, as it’s better to have a product that excels in one aspect instead of focusing on multiple areas.
Check Trial Room Wait Times (Assistance) - Approximate how long it will take to get a trial room, so that users can come back when it is relatively free
View Shopping Cart Near You (Assistance) - Find shopping carts in multiple locations around the store as opposed to just at the entrance
Voice-enabled Assistant (Currently not in prototype) - How cool would it be if life was as easy as “Hey Spree, where can I find Dishwashing Liquid?”