PROJECT: Tee's Shits
ROLE: UX Designer
DURATION: 4 Weeks
Project Vision
Tee’s Shirts is a clothing store that offers affordable pricing options. The typical user is between 19-30 years old, and most users are college students or early career professionals. Tee’s Shirts goal is to make shopping fun, fast, and easy for all types of users.
The problem:
Available online shopping websites have cluttered designs, inefficient systems for browsing through products, and confusing checkout processes.
The goal:
Design a Tee’s Shirts website to be user friendly by providing clear navigation and offering a fast checkout process.
User Research
Summary:
I conducted user interviews, which I then turned into empathy maps to better understand the target user and their needs. I discovered that many target users treat online shopping as a fun and relaxing activity when they need a break from school or work. However, many shopping websites are overwhelming and confusing to navigate, which frustrated many target users. This caused a normally enjoyable experience to become challenging for them, defeating the purpose of relaxation.
Pain points:
1) Shopping website designs are often busy, which results in confusing navigation.
2) Small buttons on shopping websites make it difficult to select items that sometimes lead users to make mistakes.
3) Online shopping websites don’t provide an engaging browsing experience.
Persona: Manali
Problem Statement:
Manali is a busy college student who needs intuitive website navigation and search filters, because she wants online shopping to be stress-free.
User journey map
I created a user journey map of Manali’s experience using the site to help identify possible pain points and improvement opportunities.
Sitemap
I constructed a user flow of what a basic start to finish journey looks like while purchasing an item. This helps us in understanding ways users can interact with the product, as well as allowing us to see navigation through user goals.
Paper wireframes
Next, I sketched out paper wireframes for each screen in my website, keeping the user pain points about navigation, browsing, and checkout flow in mind.The home screen paper wireframe variations to the right focus on optimizing the browsing experience for users.
Paper wireframe screen size variations
Because Tee’s Shirts’ customers access the site on a variety of different devices, I started to work on designs for additional screen sizes to make sure the site would be fully responsive.
Digital wireframes
Moving from paper to digital wireframes made it easy to understand how the redesign could help address user pain points and improve the user experience. Prioritizing useful button locations and visual element placement on the home page was a key part of my strategy.
Digital wireframes screen size variation
Low-fidelity prototype
To create a low-fidelity prototype, I connected all of the screens involved in the primary user flow of adding an item to the cart and checking out. At this point, I had received feedback on my designs from members of my team about things like placement of buttons and page organization. I made sure to listen to their feedback, and I implemented several suggestions in places that addressed user pain points.
Usability study: parameters
Study type:
Unmoderated usability study
Participants:
5 participants
Location:
India
Length:
20-30 minutes
Usability study: findings
These were the main findings uncovered by the usability study:
Cart
Once at the checkout screen, users didn’t have a way to edit the quantity of items in the cart
Checkout
Users weren’t able to easily copy the shipping address information into the billing info field
Account
During the checkout process, there wasn’t a clear way for users to log in to their account to pre-fill previous billing and shipping info
Mockups
Before usability studies:
After usability studies:
Mockups
To make the checkout flow even easier for users, I added a check box that allowed users to use the same address for billing and shipping.
Before usability studies:
After usability studies:
Mockups: Original screen size
Mockups: Screen size variations
I included considerations for additional screen sizes in my mockups based on my earlier wireframes. Because users shop from a variety of devices, I felt it was important to optimize the browsing experience for a range of device sizes, such as mobile and tablet so users have the smoothest experience possible.
High-fidelity prototype
My hi-fi prototype followed the same user flow as the lo-fi prototype, and included the design changes made after the usability study, as well as several changes suggested by members of my team.
Accessibility considerations
1
I used headings with different sized text for clear visual hierarchy
2
I used landmarks to help users navigate the site, including users who rely on assistive technologies
3
I designed the site with alt text available on each page for smooth screen reader access
Takeaways
Impact:
Our target users shared that the design was intuitive to navigate through, more engaging with the images, and demonstrated a clear visual hierarchy.
What I learned:
I learned that even a small design change can have a huge impact on the user experience. The most important takeaway for me is to always focus on the real needs of the user when coming up with design ideas and solutions.