Kleine Eland — Improving e-commerce for online toy shopping.
In an age of technology and e-commerce, it seems pretty vital that any brick and mortar shop should offer some sort of online shopping experience. But what happens when the existing online store is messy and confusing? Does the user persevere or do they get fed up and shop elsewhere?
This is exactly what the user is faced with at Kleine Elands online store. It’s confusing, frustrating, messy, and just isn’t aesthetically pleasing. The store itself is highly rated, with a large offering of Traditional and Classic wooden toys, as well as music boxes and stationary. How do we translate that into an online store? Bring that sense of fun and whimsy?
To read about my Research and UX process, see my previous Medium post; https://link.medium.com/kxG0HtDFv0.
Mood-boarding is an important way to translate a concept where words might fail. It helps establish a theme, and create a picture for visual direction.
Brand Attributes;
It seems pretty obvious what the values and ideals of a toy store would be. Especially one that specialises in a more traditional approach at play time. Lets ditch the screens and electronic beeping and keep it simple, promote play and imagination. Keep it colourful. Keep it fun.
Style Guide.
With such important focus on FUN and PLAYFULNESS, I tried to keep the colours bright and fun. The body copy typeface is simple and easy to read, while the Display typeface is fun and playful.
I took a liberty and did a bit of a rebrand. The existing logo was, well, ugly. I see the direction they were going so attempted to emulate that with the new logo. Black and “sketchy”. But also make it a little more fun, and cute.
I took a picture of an Elk Calf and “disneyfied” it. Made the eyes bigger and added “freckles” to humanise the logo. All in all, I wanted to make the “little elk” as cute as possible, without going completely over the top, and keeping on theme with the previous logo.
The reasoning behind changing from a moose to an elk was a thought out process. I spoke to several Dutch people about the direct translation for “Eland” and it was always “Elk”. While Moose is still Eland, I felt that a “Little Elk” made more sense. It still fits well with the brand and it’s attributes.
Final Prototype.
Sketch. You need to sort your shit out. Make real time collaboration so teams don’t have to constantly share libraries back and forth in a constant state of confusion. Okay. Thank you.
An obvious pain point for EVERY TEAM during this week at Ironhack. We had a lot to do in such a short period of time, and the constant stress of sharing Sketch folders back and forth really wasn’t that ideal.
In a mad dash to the finish line, we got everything completed for our presentation. Now we’ve wiped the sweat off our brows it’s time to settle in at home on the couch with a cup of tea for the weekend and mentally prepare ourselves for the onslaught that will be next week.
While I’m not happy with our final prototype, I’m proud of our team for finishing. Once the course is over I think I will enjoy sitting down and re-doing the UI for my own portfolio how I would have done it had I been working on this project alone.
