Research Plan

Before conducting research, I created a plan to house my overarching research goals, assumptions, methodologies, and timeline. This helped me stay focused and on track throughout the research process. The primary research goals of this project were:

• Identify needs, wants, expectations, and goals that people have with browsing and purchasing furniture online

• Understand people’s experience with buying furniture online and what motivate their decisions (eg. categories, brands, app features, etc.)

• Identify pain points and frustrations that people have with browsing and purchasing furniture online with and without AR

• Identify current trends, market gaps, and opportunities to create value for customers

Research Assumptions

Research Methods

Market Research

Competitor Analysis

I identified direct and indirect competitors in the furniture market and looked at their relative strengths and weaknesses. In what ways do they bring value to their customers? What gaps are there in the furniture market where customers’ wants and needs are not addressed? I learned that many renowned e-commerce websites like Target and Wayfair categorize furniture in different ways (by room, style, or type), as well as offer Pinterest-like design inspiration and interactive AR view to test product layouts. However, interestingly enough there were limitations to the AR function — users could only see one product at a time, and in order to change color or finish, users must return to the product page.

Despite learning through market research that AR was such a sought after ordeal in the furniture market, I was surprised that there were so many limitations. Which made me wonder if 74% of shoppers still preferred buying furniture in person rather than online because their wants and needs were not met by the existing AR function.

User Interviews

Survey

I conducted a 10 question survey to understand people’s preferences, opinions, and attitudes towards furniture shopping. I came across an interesting insight that even though half of the participants preferred buying furniture in store, 2/3 of them considered AR somewhat important in affecting their buying decision. This meant that people were still drawn to AR despite limitations identified in my Competitor Analysis. Below was a summary of my overall findings:

Empathy Map

Based on the insights I gathered from my primary research, I created an empathy map to organize my research and learn about users’ behaviors and attitudes. In both my user interviews and survey, I discovered that price and quality were main factors people considered when buying furniture, and lack of quality photos and nested fees were major annoyances they’ve come across online. Below I summarized user frustrations and needs in the form of pains and gains.

User Persona

After using an empathy map to consolidate my research findings, I created a user persona, Angie, to further explore people’s goals and frustrations with furniture shopping. Here I’ve validated two of my assumptions — people are more likely to purchase furniture if they can see it in their space, and they are drawn to good images to help them decide on a potential purchase. I wanted to create a good user experience for my target user group, but I had to identify the correct problem space where there was a need but current market players have not addressed or failed to meet. With the user persona I identified Angie’s 4 main goals and pain points to help me think about the problem I’m trying to solve for my users.

Customer Journey Map

I walked through the potential touch points of Angie’s customer journey based on what I learned about the furniture shopping experience. I resonated with her thoughts and feelings and looked for opportunities where Mable would succeed in meeting her needs. Many of these opportunities like quality photos and detailed descriptions were derived from my secondary research. However, I noticed that based on my understanding about users’ goals and motivations, there were many opportunities to increase customer value that most direct competitors have not addressed even though the need was obviously there. These opportunities, such as design inspiration with product tags and the ability to change color in AR view, would be a solid starting point for me to brainstorm solutions in the Ideate phase.

Below was an example of a touchpoint to opportunity conversion:

TOUCHPOINT: Angie is excited to see how the store styles its furniture pieces

THOUGHTS: “The Room Ideas section is inspiring; it shows all furniture names!”

OPPORTUNITIES: Provide decor inspirations in various room settings, and be sure to tag furniture with product links

Problem Statement & HMW Statement

After learning about who my users were and their wants, needs, and pain points, I had to define the problem I would try to solve for them. This was where I turned empathy into an actionable problem statement with clear-cut objectives to work towards. I used the method drawn from user research: “(Persona) needs a way to (user’s need) because (insight).” Based on insights and problem areas found during your research, I also created a How Might We Statement to brainstorm new ideas and opportunities.

Problem Statement: “Angie needs a way to purchase furniture online because due to Covid-19 lockdowns she hasn’t been able to go into a store. Our solution should deliver a way for Angie to easily and effectively use AR to purchase furniture online knowing that they are the right fit for her space.”

HMW Statement: “How might we design the furniture shopping experience for Angie so that she can easily find and purchase the appropriate furniture for her space.”

Project Goals

Product Roadmap

After setting the vision, goals, and initiatives for the product and how they would support overall business objectives, I brainstormed ideas on what features and functionality to design for. I referred back to details of who the users were and what they needed, and in doing so, discovered many features that contribute to a positive user experience (an overlapping user and business goal). For instance, a product page with AR feature alongside pictures of furniture in various settings would achieve two of Angie’s goals — provide ideas on how to style a room as well as what the product looks like in different rooms.

All features tie to a project goal; however, those that support essential business function such as product description and checkout process had the highest priority, while others would be nice to have or could come later as features are updated and developed.

Sitemap

With a list of project goals and features established, I created a sitemap to help me visualize the structure of the website and the relationship between content on the proposed pages. Through this sitemap I could see how the navigation should be structured, where content would sit, and what I needed to design. In my user persona, two of Angie’s frustrations with furniture shopping were lack of product variety and not being able to browse by category, type, or style. Therefore in the Shop section of my sitemap, I categorized furniture by department, style, room, and brand. I noticed sales and new arrivals were industry standard categories, so I integrated them into this section as well. Before my research I assumed people shop by brand and room as much as they do by department. Given this contradicted my research findings, I made a mental note to check the validity of this assumption during usability testing.

Task Flow

After mapping out the overall information architecture, I created a task flow to illustrate the primary steps Angie would take to accomplish a goal. How would she go about browsing products, finding design inspiration, and making a purchase? In order for her to achieve these goals, what features and pages needed to be in place? While asking these questions and creating the task flow, I came across an interesting observation — each task subsequently followed the one before it. The linear nature of these tasks emulated a realistic shopping experience that I could use to test the app’s navigation and interface with (hint: usability testing).

Medium Fidelity Wireframes

After defining project goals, features, site hierarchy, and tasks, I moved onto designing the screen blueprints. I started off with low fidelity wireframes, but quickly realized I needed real context to define visual hierarchy and content flow. So I created medium fidelity wireframes with a little more thought into the specifics like layout, verbiage, and components. I referred to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for AR best practices, and researched current market players’ app design and functionality, asking myself if they solve the problems I’m trying to solve for my users. And if yes, what were some limitations? For instance, Wayfair and Houzz use AR in their apps, but based on my research findings, users were frustrated with seeing only one product at a time and not being able to change color in AR mode. I needed to make sure not only do I address users’ needs with my design, but also mitigate their frustrations. A few ways my medium fidelity wireframes do so were:

• Find design inspiration and room ideas where products are tagged for quick lookup

• Able to browse by various categories but also narrow down searches with refined results

• Gather in-depth information about a product, including dimension, weight, assembly instruction, and product specific measures like seat depth and firmness

• View multiple furniture pieces in AR mode, and change color without leaving the AR experience (per Augmented Reality - Human Interface Guidelines)

• Create a streamlined purchase experience with various checkout options

Below were a few of my medium fidelity wireframes — Room Ideas page, Results page, Product Page, Cart page, AR page, and Refine page.

UI Kit

Moving on from the brand style tile, I created a UI Kit to house all design components of the user interface. To ensure the UI elements were flexible and modular, I created symbols and text styles in Figma that made my designs easier to change. Mable’s color palette was monochromatic with a muted purple as its brand color, which during this process I learned was a good choice because 80% of the app was colorful pictures of products and rooms. A brighter brand color would have been too overpowering.

Something I learned about affordance once a user adds an item to cart was the bottom sheet. My initial design prompted a change in the cart icon, but did not elicit actionable information or addressed where one might go from there. When my DesignLab mentor suggested bottom sheet, one that presents a sub-task while keeping the main context visible so as to aid users’ mental flow, I knew it was the “missing link”. By adding a bottom sheet, people were aware of their available options, which in this context was either move forward with a purchase or go back to browsing.

In the future as Mable adds more functionality and products to the app, having an UI Kit would ensure all design elements remain in the same style and work as one mechanism.

High Fidelity Wireframes

Interactive Prototype

Prototype Walkthrough Video:

Usability Testing

During the task flow process I built linear tasks that emulated a realistic shopping experience. I would use those tasks to test the usability of the prototype and validate my assumptions to ensure I have created the right solution to the right problem.

Test Findings

Research Users’ Experience

When I first brainstormed research questions in the Empathize phase, I had a lot of questions along the lines of “what features have made furniture shopping a pleasant experience for you”. However, I soon realized that these questions were geared towards the solution and not the problem. In actuality, I should be drilling into what the problem was and why I should be solving it, not how. So I started formulating questions that asked users to share their furniture shopping experience with me. “What made it a good experience? What difficulties and pain points did you encounter?” By asking experience-based questions, I could better define users’ needs and the problems to solve for them. Both provided a point of reference to judge potential solutions against. Through researching users’ experience, I was able to ask the very important question — “Does this solution solve the problem?” If the answer was no, then it was likely the wrong solution.

Affordance is Everything

During usability testing I found out the lock function was not intuitive as there was no indication of its purpose nor visual feedback when pressed. Moving forward, I would ensure my designs have high affordance so that there is no doubt in users’ minds what will happen when they click a button, enter data, or otherwise interact with the system.

Contextual Inquiry

This project commenced during the global pandemic, but if social distancing was not an issue, I would conduct contextual inquiries to observe users shopping for furniture on their phone. The open-ended nature of a contextual inquiry uncovers tacit knowledge and provides additional insights into customer behavior — what are they seeing, doing, thinking, and aspiring.

State and Test Assumptions

By stating my assumptions, I was able to discern what questions to ask along the way to understand people’s needs, wants, goals, and frustrations with furniture shopping. However, I made sure to test them throughout research and during usability testing to determine if I was creating the right solution to the right problem, and if I could correctly draw conclusions from the results of my analysis. For instance, one of my assumptions was that people know what they want when they shop for furniture. However, during my primary and secondary research, I learned that people love product recommendations and ideas on how to style a room to the point that existing market players have dedicated sections for design inspiration. Knowing this, I made sure that the personalization component was part of my design.

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