UX Case Study: Designing A Website For Plants Boutique
As part of the UX Immersive Course by MISK, we set out to design an e-commerce website for a local store ”Hayah Plant Boutique”.
In this case study, i’ll take you through the design process, from initial research to final design, and show you how we created an e-commerce website that reflects hayah’s brand and values.
Disclaimer: This UX design project was conducted as part of a student project and is not associated with hayah or any other business.
Project duration: Two weeks
Project type: Group project
Role: Involved in all of the processes
Teammates: Fatimah almansour , Saud alarjani , Ameerah alhafi , Nawaf alharbi
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Zoom
Project Overview
The Problem: Hayah plant boutique is a local plant store that wants to get more customers trust and popularity by providing their customers with detailed information about the plant and its category, as well as clear pictures to indicate the health status of the plant and how to take care for it and to make ordering proccess easier and to save time and effort.
The Solution: In order to meet the needs of its customers by delivering a simple and easy experience, Hayah Plants Boutique requires a solution that contains all plant information such as (name, size, type), including clear and various pictures of plants, in addition to care instructions, and different plants category to filter their needs faster .
Design Process :
Discover
A Local store in Eastern Region : Get to Know Hayah Plant Boutique
A local business owned and mananged by a Saudi woman who is passionate about plants , its focused on selling indoor plants, they also offer gifting and customization options. They provide care instruction for each plant they sell.
Business Research
We conducted a business analysis of Hayah plant boutique.Our goal was to gain a better understanding of the business’s position among its competitors, identify its strengths and weaknesses.
C&C Analysis
Our methodology involved a comprehensive C&C analysis on 5 Local direct competitors to define the strength points and analyze the business needs. Two businesses showed higher scoring on criterias but all businesses lacked on feature which was having a filtering options. This does not give the user the choice to easily find what they are looking for.
User Research
User Interviews
After researching the business and understanding what hayah boutique is offering, we started our user research with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of users’ behavior and pain points during plants online shopping and identifying opportunities for creating a better e-commerce experience.
During the remote interviews conducted for our project, we used the following questions:
- What specific information do you look for when looking for a plant?
- What makes you decide to buy a plant online rather than a physical store?
- What challenges do you face or anticipate when you buy/ browse plants online?
- What makes you decide which plant to get?
- Describe your previous experinces with buying/browsing plants online?
- How often do you purchase plants?
- What do you mainly purchase plants for?
We interviewed 14 users using the Snowballing method, We mainly focused on users who have experience with buying plants online and this allow us to gather valuable data, which we then used to move into the next step of our UX design process — affinity mapping.
Define
Affinity Mapping
Key insight statements:
- Values plant information including names, types, safety, and care information.
- Browse using categories, searching, reviews, and social media.
- Cares about low maintenance plants
- Loved shopping on the competitors website (Nabataty)
- Concerned about photo accuracy
- Prefers beneficial plants like air purifying plants
- Values clear communication and contact
- More payment options
- Price conscious
- Requires details for dealing with sick plants
- Cares about care instructions (watering, sun, and heat)
- Loves gifting and personalizing orders
- Cares about the plant size
- Requires efficient and professional delivery
- Use plants to decorate places and boost mood
Persona
Problem Statement
Ruba is a saudi woman who is passionate about plants but also has a day job, needs a solution to help her find plants with full information and care instructions and accurate pictures or receiving healthy plants. In order to gift people and most importantly decorate her space with aesthetically pleasing plants to be cozy.
Feature Prioritization
Now, Next, Later
Once we came up with the solution, we started to ideate a lot of features that we want to include on our platform.We organized the features depending on their priority to solve Ruba’s problem, asking ourselves whether to build the feature right Now, Next or Later.
Design
Site Map
At this point, we were ready to start building the site map.
User Flow
Next, we created the user flow.
Wireframes
Usability Testing
we conducted a moderated usability testing with 5 participants. The study involved assigning participants the task of purchasing easy care plant and change the size of the plant and pot color.
Through this process, we were able to gather valuable feedback from participants on their experience using the website and identify areas for improvement, which revealed that
- Some users were confused about the exact plant size. Adding a number when a size is selected helps them identify their desired choice
- Some users were unsure about what the font of the personalization would look like. Adding a style guide pop-up helped give them a visual view of the design
Iteration
Based on this insight, we made iterative changes to the design, such as indicates the size of the plant in cm and added style guide for personalization option to let the user see samples of how the plant will look like.
Deliver
High Fidelity Prototype
finally it’s time to reveal the final product 🥳.
What’s Next?
- Conduct another usability test to validate our iterations.
- Add more enhancements and creatvity for the personalization options and improvement will not stop here
Final Thoughts 🪄
This is my second UX project in the program, and I am really proud of what i have achieved so far. I am grateful for my team members for dedicating their time and efforts in this project.
I want to thank Misk for this immersive experience. Also I would like to thank our extraordinary instructors Rahaf Abunijem & Nouf alghamdi, for guiding us and providing their valuable feedbacks throughout the project.
Finally, I would like to thank you for reaching this far and reading my case study :)
