Eco-Stylist.com Redesign (Mid - Fi)

This project was a challenge in usability and information architecture .

My Role: UX|UI Lead designer & Researcher

Objective: Optimizing the usability and information architecture of the e-commerce experience for Eco-Stylist’s users

Problem Statement

Users who shop for eco-friendly sustainable clothing and benefit from personal styling services need an intuitive and organized platform to shop. Eco Stylist users are overwhelmed by extra content and want to shop without being redirected.

Goals

1. Redesign Eco-Stylist in a way that highlights the key functions of the site: shopping for clothes and getting personal styling services

2. Building on the information architecture of the site to provide fewer steps for users.

3. Create an interactive prototype to test with users.

My Research Process

I started by seeking context of the existing issues on Eco Stylist. I did this by comparing features on competing sites. It was very clear that Eco Stylist lacked many features and most of those missing features had to do with having an account. Users are used to features like favoriting items and dealing with returns both of which require an account.

…and shopping on the website directly.

My heuristic analysis chart displays the severity of issues through number ratings 1–4, yellow being the least urgent and Red being of high priority.

To make further inferences and better understand Eco-Stylist’s protocol, I made a business model canvas . I was finally prepared enough with context on Eco-Stylist to run a usability test and interview new users to validate my findings .

I rallied 5 users letting them roam the site freely and walked them through a number of basic tasks like:

• Checking out.

• Finding specific items.

• Getting styling tips.

• Creating an account.

Afterwards I interviewed users to see how the experience made them feel and if there were any highlights or pain points

Generally users felt the design was too plain. The amount of text and articles overshadowed the shopping experience. Many users said they would have put certain features in other (central) areas to access them better, These suggestions included :

• Centering The menu and the homepage “start here” button and

• Rearranging the “Styling” section to be more concise and understandable to utilize.

Users were confused about a number of things including realizing there’s a personal styling on the site, that there was no shopping cart to be found and that you could only purchase clothes by getting redirected to other sites. A few users complained about the menu bar glitching with the hovering function.

My Main Key User Insights

-Users would prefer to do all their purchasing in one place .

- Having important features front and center will enhance the learnability of the site.

-Keeping long text and articles on a separate page or to a minimum would be less distracting for the user’s shopping experience .

Here is a journey map simulating a shopping experience on the existing site through a Persona I created .

 To wrap up my research and design plan I organized an open card sorting with all of the users I tested with . I noticed my card sorting participants were all trying to consolidate the content in Eco-Stylist’s original Site Map cards . It was a surprise for me to see fewer sub categories than I expected . I followed suit by making the content on my site map condensed while still keeping as much content as possible to maintain the integrity .

Personas