Etsy App Feature Integration
Improving the communication process for custom orders
By Christine Chin
Project Overview
I worked on a team with two other UX designers, John and Kem, to integrate new features revolving item customizations on the existing Etsy app. We were given a brief stating that Etsy wanted to create features that easily identify sellers who take requests for customizations and also allow those same sellers to easily take requests.
My role
UX Designer
Timeframe
2 Weeks
Limitations, Parameters, Resources, and Materials
My team and I immediately sent out a screener survey regarding users’ experiences with online marketplaces for handmade goods. We received 47 responses, 97% of whom had bought from Etsy, yet only 6 respondents sold handmade goods online. This led to difficulty finding sellers of online marketplaces to conduct user interviews and gain insight from.
Initial Problem Statement
How might we improve communication during the customization process between buyers and sellers?
How did you confirm or refine your initial assumptions?
We initially assumed that buyers want the option to customize items and that sellers want to charge more for customization options. We conducted user interviews to validate if our assumptions were true. We were able to validate our assumption about the buyers, but did not recruit enough willing sellers to get enough clarity about their wants.
User Interviews
My team and I conducted 9 user interviews — consisting of 3 sellers and 6 buyers aged 21 to 29 years old. After our interviews, we created an affinity mapping exercise to synthesize our findings.
We found that users wanted an easier way to identify customized products, a more efficient way of communicating with sellers, and a standard way to request custom orders.
“The current way Etsy lets me place an order requires me to send a message to a seller — I can’t even tell when they will get back to me.”
We created two personas (below) using our research findings so that we could continue designing our feature integrations for our main users.
Sketches
John, Kem, and I participated in a design studio by first separately brainstorming ideas for features and their functionality. We then came back together to iterate on those designs and created a final sketch (below).
During our synthesis process, we were able to discover some key features that could solve our users’ issues.
We created a feature prioritization matrix (below) in order to refine the features we wanted to include to create an efficient and effective integration design.
Features Integrated & Mid-fidelity Wireframes
These 3 key features were derived from our insights and research:
- We incorporated a customization toggle in the filter screen
- We added a seller online / offline indicator on the product page with a live chat feature
- We created separate order customization screens defined by sellers that users can click into from the product page
Then, our team used the key features we decided on integrating as well as our sketches to create mid-fidelity wireframes (below).
Usability Tests and Resulting Iterations
Usability Testing Round 1: Testing Mid-fidelity Prototype
My team’s goal was to test the functionality of the newly added feature integrations in Etsy and verify if users find them intuitive and useful.
We tested 5 users between the ages of 23–60 and had two team members during each usability test — one to test the user while the other took notes.
We created three tasks (below) with a task completion rate of 100%, but our first two tasks had a large percentage of indirect success.
Usability Testing Round 2: Testing High Fidelity Prototype
Utilizing our findings from the first round of usability testing, we made the search functionality more clear and the custom order form more intuitive.
Our goal for the second round of usability testing was to see if the design changes we made increased the effectiveness and accessibility of our features.
We tested 5 users between the ages of 23–28 and this time reached a direct success rate of 100% across the board with every single user.
Prototype
Link to prototype: https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/TAJXHQBHN6D
Reflection
Throughout the two weeks of working with my two teammates, I learned that I am very organized and helped my team stay on task. As soon as our project began, I created a Google Drive folder with sub-folders dividing our phases of work. I also created the formatting and visuals for our presentation which our instructors said was laid out in a clear and thorough way.
I did learn from working with my teammates that I would like to improve my user testing skills and learn to better deviate from the testing script to gain further insights.
If my team and I could have done this differently, we would have liked to interview more sellers to better understand their goals, wants, needs, and pain points so we could solve for them in our designs more deeply.
