Backpack Shopping Website
01/13
Overview
About product
Tee’s Shirts is a backpack store that offers affordable pricing options. The typical user is between 18-40 years old, and most users are college students or early career professionals. Backpacker’s goal is to make shopping fun, fast, and easy for all types of users.
Duration
Oct 2021 to Dec 2021
02/13
Introduction
Problem
Available online shopping websites have cluttered designs, inefficient systems for browsing through products, and confusing checkout processes.
Goal
Design a backpack website to be user friendly by providing clear navigation and offering a fast checkout process.
03/13
My Role
My role
UX designer leading the Backpacker website design.
Responsibilities
Conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, iterating on designs and responsive design.
04/13
Understanding the user
User Research Summary
I conducted user interviews, which I then turned into empathy maps to better understand the target user and their needs. I discovered that many target users treat online shopping as a fun and relaxing activity when they need a break from school or work. However, many shopping websites are overwhelming and confusing to navigate, which frustrated many target users. This caused a normally enjoyable experience to become challenging for them, defeating the purpose of relaxation.
05/15
Paint Points
1/ Navigation
Shopping website designs are often busy, which results in confusing navigation
2/ Interaction
Small buttons on shopping websites make item selection difficult, which sometimes leads users to make mistakes.
3/ Experience
Online shopping websites don’t provide an engaging browsing experience.
05/13
Persona
Terry is a busy college student who needs intuitive website navigation and search filters because they want online shopping to be stress-free.
07/15
User journey map
I created a user journey map of Terry’s experience using the site to help identify possible pain points and improvement opportunities.
07/13
Sitemap
Difficulty with website navigation was a primary pain point for users, so I used that knowledge to create a sitemap. My goal here was to make strategic information architecture decisions that would improve overall website navigation. The structure I chose was designed to make things simple and easy.
08/13
Wireframes
Next, I sketched out paper wireframes for each screen in my app, keeping the user pain points about navigation, browsing, and checkout flow in mind. The home screen paper wireframe variations to the right focus on optimizing the browsing experience for users.
Moving from paper to digital wireframes made it easy to understand how the redesign could help address user pain points and improve the user experience. Prioritizing useful button locations and visual element placement on the home page was a key part of my strategy.
09/15
Lo-Fi prototype
To create a low-fidelity prototype, I connected all of the screens involved in the primary user flow of adding an item to the cart and checking out.
At this point, I had received feedback on my designs from members of my team about things like placement of buttons and page organization. I made sure to listen to their feedback, and I implemented several suggestions in places that addressed user pain points.
09/13
Usability study
- Study type: Unmoderated usability study
- Participants: 5 participants
- Location: Taiwan, remote
- Length: 20-30 minutes
Findings
These were the main findings uncovered by the usability study:
1/ Carts
Once at the checkout screen, users didn’t have a way to edit the quantity of items in the cart.
2/ Checkout
Users weren’t able to easily copy the shipping address information into the billing info field.
3/ Account
During the checkout process, there wasn’t a clear way for users to log in to their account to pre-fill previous billing and shipping info.
10/13
Mockups
Based on the insights from the usability study, I made changes to improve the site’s checkout flow. One of the changes I made was adding the option to edit the quantity of items in a user’s cart using a simple “+” or “-” option. This allowed users more freedom to edit their cart without going through a complicated process to add or remove items.
11/13
High-fidelity prototype
My hi-fi prototype followed the same user flow as the lo-fi prototype, and included the design changes made after the usability study, as well as several changes suggested by members of my team.
13/15
Accessibility
Considerations
1/ I used headings with different sized text for clear visual hierarchy
2/ I used landmarks to help users navigate the site, including users who rely on assistive technologies
3/ I designed the site with alt text available on each page for smooth screen reader access
12/13
Takeaways
Impact
Our target users shared that the design was intuitive to navigate through, more engaging with the images, and demonstrated a clear visual hierarchy.
What I learned
I learned that even a small design change can have a huge impact on the user experience. The most important takeaway for me is to always focus on the real needs of the user when coming up with design ideas and solutions.
13/13
Next Steps
1/ Conduct follow-up usability testing on the new website
2/ Identify any additional areas of need and ideate on new features