Week 2-Ironhack e-commerce
Ismo Handicraft manufacture
In the second week of the UX/UI Design Bootcamp of Iron Hack, we developed a Desktop prototype in a team of 2. In this brief, the project was for local e-commerce. Our business partner is a Handcrafter specialising in wooden individual manufacture.
The motivation
The goal was to offer a great shopping experience to the customers of Ismo Handicraft Manufacture. With this website, we allow the users to create individual products and to be part of the design process.
The task
The Task was to develop a desktop Mid-Fi prototype for a local business. It is supposed to have the chance to have an e-commerce platform to increase sales and to jump on the boat of the tec sales market.
Empathize
The First step of the Design Thinking Process was to empathize with the stakeholder of the company. Therefore we made an interview with the stakeholder of Ismo Handcrafts to understand her goals, needs and current problems as well as her motivation for the business to focus on some design principles. For the stakeholder Isabelle Grünewald, a young creative interior designer, it is most important that her products are individually created for the customers and that they can give their touches and ideas to the handiwork. Her business goal for the next year is to gain more audience and grow a step further with her company. Isabelle is currently only marketing her work on Instagram and finds most of the clients in her surrounding. Therefore she needs a website. A current problem for her is the price prediction, because of the individual process, as well as time-consuming, communication of the customer's design.
User Persona
To create a user persona, we went through the whole process of quantitative and qualitative research. While preparing the survey with the help of “lean survey canvas” we got 24 responses. The result is that 54.2% of the people buy handcrafted things individually designed for them. So far 52.4% of the people use Etsy for the same purpose. 56.5% of the people want to have the option to contact the provider via email. One answer from the survey was “I would like to know what kind of cool stuff that handcrafter did so far” which immediately leads us to customer problems and to our work path. We also had interviews with potential customers of Ismo. The results of both research methods got evaluated in Affinitymaps and processed with How might we questions as:
How might we help the customer to explain what product they want to have?
How might we help the user know if a product is affordable or not?
How might we give the user the right information about the owner to make the user be sure about buying on the website?
To understand the potential users even better, we created an empathy map to establish our persona “Lisa”, with the user journey.
Lisa is a young creative woman living in Collonge. Her profession is being a teacher, but her biggest interest is in design and handcrafted products. When she needs some relaxing time she also loves knitting. When she is invited to any kind of occasion, she always comes up with creative ideas for personal presents. But nowadays, it's a problem for her to get her ideas developed. She is good for knitting but with other materials, she is unable to cope with it. This situation is pointed out in the user journey map where she has a birthday invitation and also a great present idea. Therefore she got excited about the celebration. But as she starts online searching for the present she cannot find any website to develop her ideas. She got disappointed because she loved her present idea. After a while, she found something similar and she feels blessed to have something but at the same time, she is not satisfied with the product.
Market research
Now as we create an online shop we needed to not only analyse users but also the market. Accordingly, we get some market inside with the competitor analysis and checked the most popular platforms for handcrafted products as “Etsy” and “Amazon Handmade”. Additionally, we choose also one smaller platform as “your surprise”. The main findings were these platforms don´t give the option to develop own ideas and they all give the option for categories, filters, showing customer reviews and giving the option to be a seller. More details are below.
To analyse gains, pains and jobs to be Done (JTBD), we worked with the “Value proposition Canvas” and figured out the most important jobs could be to create our idea but also to give the product details. According to that the biggest pain in the process is to communicate the idea properly and a lack of involvement of the customer in the process. But you can gain the option to have personalized individual products. The Value proposition Canvas is down below.
Afterwards, we analyzed the “Jobs to be done” while categorizing it to “Main Job to be Done” and “Related Jobs to be Done”. The main Job here is probably to choose a product either an own idea or a product to get customized. In this case of individual handcrafted objects, the result should make the user feel special. Another case is most likely that the user needs to invest more time and money in the individual product. To create the product, he/she can also check some other handcrafted items to get inspired.
A related “Job to be Done” is to communicate the idea to the provider. For this, the user can use the potions the website provides to create their handicrafts. For this process, it can be important to relate the product to something the users feel passionate about, e.g. hobbies. To develop it, it's good for the user to make for example a vision board and also share these ideas with others for some feedback.
After that, we understand what the user needs to do and also what the market already provides. To figure out what is important for Ismos handcrafted manufacture website, we made a canvas with “Amazon handmade” to see jobs we can hire or fire for our e-commerce. There are for sure actions which are also needed for the Ismo platform as the option to choose the size of the product, to choose design options, to choose the colour and the material. We fired the wish list from Amazon, as the focus is more individual. An option for an inspiration platform is more valuable for the customer in this case.
For one of the last steps of the Design Thinking process, we used the “Moscow Method” to check what “we must have, what we should have, what we could have and what we won´t have”. For an individual product, it is a must-have on the website to follow the design process. Additionally, we should have the option to categorize the products. For customers to trust it is important to show information about the production process and customer reviews. An important point is to see price ranges and design ideas. Last but not least the user should also have the option to contact Ismo. In the bellow is the complete canvas.
Before we created the Problem statement we developed “when I want to _so I can” questions and shared them with potential users to figure out if they agree with these.
When I buy a product I want to be able to customize the design so I can have exactly what I want?
When I buy a product I want to know an estimated cost so I can know if the product is affordable or not?
When I personalize designs I want to have easy choices So I can creat it fast.
When I create my own design I want to have personal support So I can make the best out of it?
Our feedback was positive and our users agreed or strongly agreed with our statements.
Problem statement and Hypothesis Statement
After the research the information where plenty to define the problem statement. To customize products and with the observation, there are currently not enough options to communicate design ideas.
“Our website was designed to achieve the goal to buy customized handicraft products. We have observed that the service is not meeting with the goal to communicate the design ideas which is causing listless for creativity and to our business.”
Out how this we focus on
“How might we improve our website so that our customers are more successful based on the amount of products getting sold?”
Information Architecture
To structure the prototype and provide the user to get along with the website and give it a clear structure we build a sitemap. Where one can see all the possible sites from the homepage and the sides following from them.
From the homepage, there is the option to go to “About” Ismo and get further to production information, contact information and to get an overview of Ismos projects. From the site to “create your product” the user just follows up sites to communicate the design to then send it to “Ismo”. When the customer wants “customized products” he/she follows up a site to choose the personal options for a product “Ismo” already created before. It can get immediately ordered.
For the “user flow,” we decided to focus on the site “create your own product” as our research results are showing the need to have the option to get your ideas produced.
In the user flow, one can see that it is mostly a follow up of pages where the client needs to fill input ( for the creation process). There is no process page or many steps where decisions need to be made.
Ideating Ideas
After researching, analysing and structuring the website for “Ismo handcrafted manufacture” the ideation process started. We were sketching several ideas to figure out the best. In the end, we combined the best out of both and generated the first Low-Fi prototype.
Low Fi prototype
In the Low-Fi, we decided which steps are necessary to communicate the user's idea that “Ismo” can understand what the customer wants to get produced. With each step, the user gives information about the individual handcraft and send this one out to Ismo.
Mid-Fi
We created the first Mid-Fi to understand the user flow better and give a good option to let some people test it. To figure out if the structure is clear. We also created fake content that the tester got the lead to other sites and doesn´t get lost in the testing process.
Prototype after Testing.
After the testing, we were happy about some improvement of the prototype to get the best result for the clients of “Ismo”. One was to add more content of Ismo´s work on the homepage to immediately get a good overview of her design. As well as the option to see customer reviews to see how trustworthy her work is. Secondary we also added to the sites of “Design style”, “Add your name” and “More details” the option to immediately check some design ideas during the design process, to not get lost during the procedure.
Here is the recording of the improved prototype.
Reflections
Our next steps for the website would be to customize the items of the user flow, add production process information, categorize the inspiration pop up during the design process and add futures like language and region.
In this project, we learned new steps of the UX process, to integrate the stakeholder's needs into the website. For the research, we got along with new Canvas to analyse the relevant information for the user and the business. We got familiar with the information architecture to structure the website with a sitemap and a user flow.
Thank you for your interest in our project.
I´m excited to continue with the next project in the 3rd week of Iron Hack Bootcamp. Feel free to leave some comments. ✌️
Also a big thank you to all the interviewees and survey participants.
If you're interested in Ismos handcrafted products check her Instagram here
