Decor : a hassle-free furniture shopping experience
Consumers shop on more devices than ever which means Decor must find ways to reach them at every touchpoint. A digital transformation will help them deliver a seamless customer journey that merges all stages of the buying experience from mobile to desktop to the store.
I worked on this project as a UX / UI Designer to help Decor bring their business online and provide them with a digital channel to meet more customers.
I was responsible for user research, wireframing, interaction design, visual design, copywriting, branding, prototyping and user testing.
To save time I started with some desk research. I went through interesting reports and articles and got more insights into the subject. I also did a competitor analysis to better know the market.
I, then, recruited users to interview them and deeply understand their needs and be able to design effective solutions.
During my visit to the store, I interviewed four customers and shadowed two of them while they were purchasing their furniture. I took advantage of my presence on-site to also ask salespersons couple questions.
Often, a furniture need is triggered by an important life event. It may be marriage, expecting a child, buying a new house, leaving family home etc.
Most of my interviewees also see their furniture as an expression of their own identity, they express themselves through their furniture and the way they decorate their interior.
This makes the purchase of furniture very personal and emotional.
All of the participants I’ve interviewed say they start looking for products online before they go to the store. So, although the in-store customer journey is flawless, they might never experience it if the digital journey went wrong.
Participants expressed a need for inspiration when shopping for furniture. Most of them use inspiration apps, save pictures and try to find products to recreate those interiors. Customers need to see pictures of fully furnished rooms to be able to imagine how all the items will fit together.
A lot happens before a customers actually buys. Once the decision is made, customers are still concerned and need to know all their options.
Decor is a successful business, they sell good-quality products at a fair price and they sell them well. They also have loyal customers who are engaged and supportive. However, the buying journey, especially furniture buying journey, is no longer a linear one. A customer may see an ad when scrolling through social media feed on the train ride to work, then visits the mobile website and opens it on desktop once at home. She will maybe decide to go to the store and then go back to the site to buy online. Customers only can decide which channels they’ll use and they expect a seamless, unified, and consistent experience across all of them.
The main user task will be purchasing a piece of furniture. So I decided to start with it and analyse it to observe how users will act once they enter Decor's website.
After I’ve thought about the customer experience and user needs I created a user flow diagram to visualize the path the user will take to accomplish the task in the most simple way.
I decided to start by designing a version of the website for mobile devices for three reasons:
- Customers rely on their smartphone
- Mobile e-commerce is increasing
- People check their smartphones more than 60 times a day
I created sketches and wireframes for different pages and seek feedback by running quick usability tests.
Decor wanted to refresh their brand so I created a new visual identity for them. From the logo, to the colour palette and typography, to the imagery, I created a modern, clean and warm style.
Talking to customers made it clear that they don’t always know what exactly they need when looking for furniture and that they need inspiration. I decided to go with a tab based navigation to highlight two ways of shopping and easily switch from inspiration gallery to the products page of each room.
Customers can get inspired, create inspiration board and save pictures they like. Each picture comes with a list of products needed to recreate the same style. Customers can buy them right away or through product page.
Customers need a lot of information before they can buy a piece of furniture. In product page they can see full size images of the product and also visualize the product in their surrounding space with the help of AR.
As said before, most customers use the digital channel before going to the store. I decided to merge the digital experience with the physical one by creating a feature that allow users to transform their cart into a shopping list. After choosing the store they are informed about the stock availability, the location of the product in the store and check it off once collected.
I organized the checkout in a way that answers all customers queries. They can choose to add assembly services for purchased products or some of them or just skip it if this service isn’t needed. According to what they have chosen, the system will suggest shipping methods and adequate delivery slots.
Once the Hi-Fi wireframes were ready I recruited my users for testing and conducted a usability test to make the last refinement. I collected valuable feedback and made some changes accordingly.
I think the best thing I’ve done in this project is spending time in furniture store. This helped me understand who are Decor's customers. I put myself in their shoes and understood how they start their shopping experience, how they make decisions, what are their needs and frustrations throughout the journey. Interviewing them about their online journey has completed my observations and helped me identify the right problems to solve.
One thing I’ve learned from architecture school is that the final project should never look exactly like the initial sketches. The project should keep evolving and it is okay to kill some ideas. While reading the brief for the first time I had a lot of ideas but they completely changed as the user research got underway.