One-Person Design Sprint Challenge— An Ecommerce Site

The “Design Sprint” is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It was born out of a need for a process that would allow companies to quickly create testable prototypes so that they could determine if they wanted to go through with the designing and building of a particular product. Companies such as Google, Uber, Slack, Lego, and many more are using Design Sprints to successfully solve their big problems. If you would like to know more, learn here.

Photo credits: David Chin

This case study is based on the Bitesize UX challenge called House2Home while applying the design sprint methodology. Different from Google Venture’s traditional design sprint working with a team, I will be the sole designer and takes 3–5 hours per day to walk through the step-by-step process.

Challenge

House2Home is an e-commerce website that sells home decor items & accessories. When customers move into a new home or apartment, they want to buy multiple items to personalize their new place. However, they don’t feel confident doing it on their own and they are not sure whether the item matches each other.

Constraints

• The solution should be designed as a website, starting with designs for larger screens (desktop&laptop).
• Focus on helping users that want a “decor kit” of multiple products to decorate a new apartment.
• Most House2Home products are decorative products and accessories that cost around $10 — $50, they don’t sell furniture, appliances, or other large pieces.

My Role

Solo UX/UI designer

Day 1 Understand

The goal of the first day is to specify what exactly the challenge is and pick the manageable piece of the problem that I can solve in one week.

Interview

I started with reviewing the existing research on the problem and here are some of the highlights from the research:

“I wanted to buy some stuff to make it a little more stylish after moved into a new apartment, but it was hard trying to stick to a budget” — Maria

“I find lots of cool little items that I like, but I never know if they’ll all look good together in the same room until I buy them.” — Dan

“So many items look great in the staged photos — but will they look good in MY living room? You don’t know until order and see how they look in the space.” — Anna

“I don’t want to decorate my place with a bunch of tiny, cheap items…but I also don’t want to spend all my money on one big thing.” — Lauren

“I’ll admit — I want my place to look good, but spending time searching for stuff just gets tiring.” — Ron

While understanding the insights shared by the users, I used the micro to take down the notes as even I worked alone in this project but knowing how to share my findings helps me seamlessly become a part of any design team. In order to further synthesize the research, I summarized the key important things that users mention frequently:

• Knows the “feel” and “like” but not sure what to buy;
• Would like to know whether the stuff will look good together while putting together;
• Have a quick “facelift” to the apartment without costing much time in searching for lots of individual items.
• The budget concerns;

Notes of the interviews

Map

I drew the map to better visualize the flow of the user in shopping the home accessories. I split it into several important steps:

User Map from visiting the website to placing the order

HMW Questions

With the key insights mentioned above and taking the user journey into consideration, I narrowed down the notes to the 3 most important HMW (How Might We) questions that I tried to answer in my sprint. Among them:

• HMW help the users to decide and match the style they like;
• HMW provide the suggestion to help users decide the items to buy;
• HMW help users better managing their budget while shopping;

Day 2 Sketch

The second day of a design sprint is to break down sketching into a step by step activity. Firstly I spent some time looking at the competitor’s products and related products for inspiration and then with all the foundation on the first day, I used the method call crazy 8 to sketch my solutions.

Lightning Demos

The goal of this exercise is to generate a pool of ideas that I could later use to produce the solutions. I spent half a day looking at competitors that selling similar products or provide design services for inspiration, which included: Urban Outfitters, Joss & Main, World Market, All Modern, Uncommon Good, Crate & Kids, Wayfair and Etsy. Here are my sketching notes:

Lightning Demo

After study various competitors, I found they have something in common as well as the unique points:

Things in common:

• In order to help users to understand the category of the accessories, they not only provide the category name but also the images, and it helps customers more easily to decide the type they would like to explore.
• In the product page, the seller provides various buying suggestions, such as “Compare Similar Items”, “Frequently Bought Together”, “Customer Also Viewed”.
• The feature of “Quick View/Shop” to allow customers to view items with shortcuts and add to cart in one click.

Things are unique:

• In the Wayfair, on top of the category of product types, they also have a group of “Under $25”, which helps the customer with the limited budget to check the item in high convenience.
• Joss & Main provide the “Inspiration” of images such as “Entryway look” to help users to shop the products with the same look.
• Crate & Kids uses the “Our designer recommend” and “Complete the look” to showcase the relevant products.

Crazy 8s Sketch

The process of “Lighting Demo” gave me a lot of inspiration and the next step would be “Crazy 8s”. Crazy 8’s is a fast sketching exercise that requires the designer to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes. Generating a wide variety of solutions to the challenge is the key here.

I referred back to my map I made on Day 1 and decided the most critical step (screen) for my users. With my notes in “Lighting Demo”, I started to use Crazy 8 to sketch solutions.

My thoughts that generated in Crazy 8:

• In the research stage, most of the users said they know what the “feel” and “look” they like, but not sure what to buy and how the items match with each other, so is that possible to use the “style image” to help customer to make a decision?
• Is it possible to provide the buying options such as decor kit of Plan A, Plan B?
• How about setting the groups of “Under $10”, “$10 — $30” then customers can easily pick the items from the price groups?
• How about attaching the price tap of the products and displaying them in the image with the same look/feel?

Day 3 Decide

After comparing each idea, I was about to decide which idea worked for my case, and in the traditional design sprint team, they will summarize all the “Crazy 8s” and vote for the best solution. The decider would also have the right to the final decision. As I am the sole designer in this “Design Sprint”, so I am not only the proposer but also the decider. In order to ensure the decision is not on a whim, here is my thought process and the decision that I go with:

• As the image is extremely important to help the customers to know the style and make a decision, so in the feature of “Complete the look”, I will use the images to display the items in a true life scenario.
• Using the “Complete the Look” and the “Our designers pick” to help the customers to find the items match with each other. According to the research, the user mentioned when they decorate their room, they would like to listen to the ideas from the professionals.
• The purchasable items will be attached with a price tap, once the customer is interested in that they could click it, and the “Card” of product details will show.
• Customers can add it to the wishlist or add to the card to create their personalized “decor kit” and check out the items under the same “feel/look”.

Here is the storyboard I drew to guided my prototype:

Storyboard

Day 4 Prototype

Day 4 is the prototyping day and all my ideas and decisions come together into a realistic prototype that I could test with users. The prototype does not need to be perfect but it should be able to show in front of the users to get their reactions and answer my questions.

Different from the traditional “design sprint” to divide components of the prototyping. I will complete it all by myself and in order to complete it within the day. Once it was done, I exported the screens to Marvel for prototyping.

Day 5 Validate

On the last day of the “Sprint Design”, I conducted 5 usability tests remotely using video chat platforms of Skype or Zoom. In the interview, the main goal is to identify the aspects of the prototype that work, as well as the aspects that might need to be adjusted. Here are the tasks:

1. To select a product you would like to purchase, then check the “complete look” to explore the feels of decor you like.
2. In the “look” you prefer, view different items you would like to shop together and personalize your “decor kit”.

Findings:

1. User like the creative way to help them easily decide the feel and items they prefer;
2. The status of the “Add to cart” needs to updated once the product was added to the cart.
3. Users suggested more “styles/looks” to view.
4. In the “complete the look” image, the price tap of the product added to the shopping cart should be updated to differentiate from the products without purchase.

Reflection

The “design sprint” is originally created for conducting in the design team and after this 5-days experience in conducting it independently, I think even one-person a team could benefit from this design process. Here are some of my reflections:

• Step out the “Comfort zone” — 8 ideas in 8 minutes? prototype in one day? sketching and more sketching? Yes, no joking, and you’ll be surprised what you have achieved in 5 days!
• Critical thinking — there are many decisions that need to make in 5 days, and as you are not only the ideas’ proposer but also your own decider, so it is a great practice for designers in critical thinking and decision making.
• Time management — Use timeboxing to split tasks, sprint doesn’t mean in a rush and low quality thus time management is vital to guarantee the outcomes.

Thank you for reading!