Overview
Client: Design Within Reach
DWR is a furniture retailer that provides high quality, exceptionally crafted furniture intended to stay with the customer throughout their life.
My Role
Project Manager
Researcher
Low-Fidelity Designer
Tools
Sketch
Miro
Google Suite
The Requirements
DWR wanted a mobile prototype that would help connect their interior design team with potential customers
Users needed a way to receive personal service and recommendations through mobile interface
Additionally, we were asked to explore a variety of specific solutions including:
Onboarding quiz, product discovery, design inspiration, live chat, video chat, AR connection and mood boards
The User
Needs & Goals
Wants furniture that will fit in with the aesthetic of their space
Wants an easy way to visualize furniture in their space
Needs professional help/input on furniture pieces before making a final purchasing decision
Behaviors & Frustrations
Likes to browse online but prefers purchasing in person
Often consults with design specialists
Doesn’t like that furniture doesn’t look the same online vs in person
Too many options make it difficult to finalize purchase decision
The Problem
Users need an easier way to visualize furniture in their space because they can’t visit a brick-and-mortar store and need professional consultation
The Research
I started with performing a heuristic evaluation of the existing mobile website for DWR. The goal here was to discover any areas for improvement that would be relevant to the solution that we were creating. Their mobile site functions well but I took not of the 3D room design feature because of its poor interaction experience. This would be a crucial focus for the AR feature in our app design.
We then performed competitive and comparative analyses. Other furniture retailers such as Crate&Barrel, All Modern and Wayfair all had good information architecture and clear display of item information. However, they all lacked live chat and AR functionality, both of which are important features for getting additional help and realistic representation of items. We also looked at companies such as Iscape and Nike to get a sense of how their AR technology worked. Both of these companies have sophisticated AR capabilities that helped inform our design decisions when determining how the AR can be made user friendly.
Finally, we went through 5 rounds of user interviews to get a sense of what real-world users would want to see in a good furniture app. We asked various questions ranging from understanding how our users prefer to shop for furniture to what features users feel would be most helpful when shopping for furniture online.
The Synthesis
We got a lot of great feedback from our user interviews and we worked together to categorize those findings into key insights that would help drive our solution.
By organizing user feedback into an affinity map, we were able to identify different aspects of the furniture shopping experience that could directly be addressed and solved in our app.
At this point we had a good understanding of user values and pain points. How might we approach a solution that would address those?
Enable users to visualize furniture in their space without leaving home.
Help make professional consultation easily accessible.
Provide inspiration to help the user narrow down design choices.
Collect data on user preferences to ensure that they receive desired product suggestions.
The Designs
Sketches
By this point we had the research under our belt. Our team was full of great designers so I suggested that we go through a design studio exercise to throw ideas out there. This is just some of what we came up with. A quick review of all our aggregated sketches allowed us to easily determine what would address the core problem and its offshoots.
Greyscale Prototype
From our sketches we were able to develop a preliminary greyscale prototype to begin usability tests. When creating our prototype we kept in mind both key points that had emerged from our earlier research along with the desired recommendations that were provided by the client. In this way we were able to ensure that we meet user and client needs.
The Results
Usability tests were conducted and room for improvement was discovered.
Users wanted a way to choose more than one option for style preferences in the onboarding quiz.
Users wanted to video call with a representative before chatting and getting confirmation from the representative.
Users wanted a way to navigate more easily between the various pages in the checkout process
We set out to address client and user needs. We succeeded.
By keeping the desires of the client in mind while approaching our research and design process, we were able to come up with designs that catered to both.
Product Discovery
Video Chat
Onboarding Quiz
Design Inspiration
AR Connection
Live Chat
The Final Product
The Next Steps
With more time, I would love to further develop the tablet functionality of our DWR app. Because of the increased screen real-estate there is more opportunity to include features such as live chat within the AR view. —>
Many of our users complained about the lack of transparency in shipping status on their purchased products. I believe it would be valuable to work on providing users regular shipping updates within the app as this would would give them peace of mind and encourage them to keep coming back.
Due to our limited timeframe for this project, we were only able to explore a few main features in the app. With additional time I would like to conduct more usability testing and user interviews to see what other features would best serve the goal of connecting DWR’s designers with their valued customers.