Etsy App Customization Features

Project Overview

Etsy is an e-commerce site that is dedicated to creating a unique human-centric shopping experience for their customers. They work to provide opportunity for sellers to share their unique products with the public. Etsy has to separate apps: one for sellers and one for buyers. Currently, the Etsy seller app does not make it easy for sellers to communicate that they sell customizable items and the buyer app does not make it easy for buyers to identify sellers who take custom requests. I worked on a team of three to change this by adding features to both the seller and buyer apps

Scope of Work

Along with 2 other team members, I played the role of researcher, designer and tester for this project which spanned two weeks. While we all worked together for the research and testing phases, I worked primarily alone on the redesign of the Etsy buyer app.

We all started by conducting a series of initial interviews to discover the needs and wants of both Etsy buyers and Etsy sellers with regards to customization. We added features to both apps respectively that focused on buying or selling customized items, created mid-fi clickable prototypes through Invision which we tested on real users before ultimately building hi-fi versions we tested on 10 more additional users.

Problem Statement + Hypothesis

Etsy is a great place to buy and sell unique custom items but both the buyer and seller apps do not currently have an easy way for buyers to find sellers that customize items nor does it have an easy way for sellers to notify buyers that they offer customizable items. How might we add features to both apps that make buying and selling custom items on Etsy clear and easy to do?

RESEARCH PHASE

User Interviews

We created a screener survey in order to find both people who had sold customizable items on Etsy and people who had bought a custom item from Etsy previously. From our screener, we were able to find 5 buyers and 5 sellers whom we asked two separate collections of questions.

Affinity Mapping

Through the process of affinity mapping, we identified key trends and themes in the information we gathered from our initial interviews. By grouping information this way, we were able to determine some important insights we ultimately formed into “I” statements.

The most prevalent for sellers being:

• “I indicate that I make custom items in various ways.”
• “I need additional information through direct messaging.”
• “I need to accurately communicate shipping time with my customers.”

The most prevalent for buyers being:

• “I had to contact the seller for customization.”
• “I need transparency during the Etsy process.”
• “I did not have a pleasant experience with seller communication.”

The “I” statements both confirmed our original problem statement and gave us direction on what key features we wanted to incorporate in our app redesign.

DESIGN PHASE

Sketching + Concept

From the affinity maps and “I” statements, we were able to solidify two main goals for our app redesigns:

1. Allow sellers to easily communicate to buyers that they sell customizable items
2. Allow buyers to easily know and understand which sellers offer custom items.

We went through the process of a design studio in order to start identifying the key features we wanted to include.

From there, we were able to come up with a long list of possible features. We did two separate MoSCoW maps in order to narrow down our “Must Have” features for each Etsy app.

Must Have Buyer Features:

• Customization icon
• Tracking timeline
• Contacting seller on product page

Must Have Seller Features:

• Etsy messenger
• Etsy tracking/estimated shipping time
• Push notification
• Custom product form

Mid-fidelity Screens

After determining the features we would be adding to the apps, we broke into two teams; my job was to create the mid-fi screens for the buyer app in Sketch. Once I had created all the necessary screens for the buyer app, I combined them into a clickable prototype using Invision.

Buyer Mid-Fi Screens

Please view mid-fi buyer prototype below:

Prototype https://invis.io/BGG1TESHUMX

USER TESTING

Mid-fi User Testing

For the Etsy buyer app, test subjects were given a scenario and asked to complete two tasks. The results were as follows:

• Users that could complete all tasks: all users completed the tasks
• Users that found the app useful: all said useful
• Average level of user difficulty from 1 to 5: 1.5 out of 5 (with 5 being difficult).

Recommendations for next iteration:

• Move the search to a more intuitive location

Final User Testing

After testing the mid-fi prototype I discovered that the additional features I added to the buyers app successfully solved the issue users had previously had with finding and purchasing custom items on Etsy. I did, however, decide to move the search to a more intuitive location when creating my hi-fidelity screens.

Some hi-fi samples for the buyer app

After moving the search button to a more intuitive location and making some other small changes, I created another clickable prototype in Invision. Please view my high fidelity prototype below:

High fidelity buyer prototype: https://invis.io/FYG3JHBNH52

My team and I tested my high fidelity buyer prototype on 5 people and the final results were as follows:

• Users that could complete all tasks: all users completed the tasks
• Users that found the app useful: all said useful
• Average level of user difficulty from 1 to 5: 1.2 out of 5 (with 5 being difficult)

Reflection

My team and I learned our initial interviews were incredibly insightful as far as determining what changes needed to be made to the Etsy apps to simplify the process of buying and selling custom items. While our buyer app was successful as far as buying custom items, unfortunately the changes we made to the seller app did not successfully solve the issues people originally had with selling custom items, thus more iterations will be needed.

I’d like to do a final iteration for the buyers app as well to test whether people are more responsive to a different icon that signifies customization (other then the scissors which we currently used).

Overall this project was an eyeopening experience as I learned a lot about working and designing within a group!