Stylized
Easily search through all your favorite stores in one place!
Problem Statement: A frequent shopper doesn’t want to waste time searching through all their favorite online stores or look through a mall to find apparel they love, this app brings all of their favorite stores into one place so they can search through them all at once and get recommendations based on what they have previously bought and the stores they chose.
To create an app that solves a real-world problem I developed primary and secondary personas to focus the app on a specific audience and their needs.
Primary Persona: an online shopper looking for a specific item from any of their favorite stores.
Secondary Personas: an online shopper looking for clothing/outfit recommendations and an online shopper wanting to compare prices for similar items across different online stores.
Design Process:
User Development: My design process started with user development. Before I even began working on the app design, I wanted to ensure a focused product. I create specific personas and user scenarios to centralize the app for specific problems that my final design would be able to efficiently solve.
Low Fidelity Wire-framing: I create dozens of iterations for each main function in order to determine what designs would be most intuitive for my users.
High Fidelity Wire-framing: I moved to high fidelity wire-framing to focus on the visual design. For the visual design, I wanted to keep the colors and layout simple. Many products from other sites were going to be incorporated and I wanted to avoid a busy design that would clash with these outside elements.
Prototyping: My final stage was creating a high fidelity design and prototyping through Figma. Here, I made decisions about the flow and functionality of the app. I confirmed the compatibility of the function and design.
User Testing: Once satisfied with my prototype I created a usability test to obtain user feedback. I had five users test my app based on specific instructions and tasks. I then incorporated their feedback into the second prototype for my app.
Solution Rationale: In order to solve my overarching problem, I created an app that allows a user to shop from all their favorite stores in one place. First, they are tasked with selecting all their favorite online stores. Then they are brought to a screen prompting them to choose to either see product recommendations or to search for products. Recommendations are based on the user’s selected stores and their previous purchases. When a user searches for a specific item it brings up results from all of their favorite stores in one place so they can easily compare look and price. They can always click on a product to see information and have the ability to add it to their shopping bag. Finally, the user has the ability to buy everything right in the app. I designed it to be similar to other online shopping apps and basic colors so as not to distract from the many products. By keeping the functionality closer to other online shopping apps it allows users to feel comfortable right away and use this replace their dozens of other shopping apps.
User Feedback: After user testing, I recorded all of the user feedback I received. It was mostly positive, many saying that they wish this app existed already. Most also believed it to be very easy to navigate and understand as it follows a similar layout as other online shopping apps. One of the biggest critiques was the font size was too small and hard to read. Users had to squint or zoom in to read the small text throughout the app. Users also were not noticing when an item was successfully added to their bag, they needed it to be more noticeable. One of the most important responses was that users were unsure of what to expect within the app, one recommended using a welcome page to set user expectations. These were the most important results from user testing and were made a top priority for the second app prototype.
Next Steps: My goal is to create another prototype. I want to administer another round of usability testing in order to see how users are responding to my changes. I also want to add more of the pink accent color throughout my app.