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De novo is a fine jewelry store in Bay Area that provides platform to upcoming designers to showcase their unique one of a kind creation
Website Redesign for Improved Shopping Experience.
This project is not affiliated with De novo fine jewelry. The following work is a conceptual educational exercise to practice and refine UX Skills.
Discover
PROBLEM
The De novo's unconventional website experience has affected their revenue. Research indicates that most of the users leave the website without exploring all categories as they get overwhelmed as well as frustrated. De novo would now like to redress the problem to make better experience for existing and new customers.
RESEARCH GOAL
The goal is to understand users' online jewelry purchasing patterns and identify any positive or negative experiences.
When I started redesigning De Novo, my job was to understand the user's needs and pain points to make this site’s navigation and layout intuitive and user-friendly. Through extensive user research and gaining a deeper understanding of the audience, I was able to cultivate a budding idea for their website design.
Role - UX Designer
Duration - 4 Week
Tools/Methods - Figma, Optimal workshop, Trello, Google slides
Responsibility - Research,Usability testing on original site, Ideation, Wireframes, Usability testing, HiFi prototype
RESEARCH​
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Motivation was to better understand people’s experience (or lack thereof) with buying online jewelry. I sent out a screener survey to recruit participants for user interviews, and selected a demographically, experientially diverse pool of interviewees.
I conducted 5 video interviews via Zoom. In the interviews, I sought out information about people’s current routines and practices, level of familiarity, and perceptions of buying jewelry online.
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Then I did usability testing on the original site of De novo to understand what kind of challenges and frustrations users are facing.
"Jewelry is like a biography a story that tells the many chapters of our life"
4 PHASES OF THE DESIGN THINKING PROCESS
Deliver
Design
Define
Discover
Research user needs & business goals.
Synthesize research into personas & problem statements.
Craft solutions to solve users’ pain points & business goals.
Test solution & iterate on designs.
Affinity Map
I've compiled an affinity map to provide a concise summary of my findings.
In summary, the key insights from our user interviews:
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The site's navigation was unclear and complicated, leading to frustration among users.
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Sold items were not visible until you click on the image and goes to the description page which was very frustrating to the users
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The description of the product does not contain sufficient information.
Utilizing affinity mapping, we synthesized our research into artifacts to guide our design process: persona and problem statement . Then I used those artifacts to prioritize features and craft a design hypothesis that defined our MVP.
PERSONA
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From our research and affinity mapping, we extracted a persona: Emma who is an IT professional, influencer, and brand conscious who lives with her husband and 1 beautiful kid. She loves to shop for expensive jewelry on special occasions.
Define
PROBLEM STATEMENT
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Emma has a passion for purchasing jewelry, but she's facing challenges while shopping online. She's experiencing difficulty with unclear website navigation, insufficient product information, and a confusing checkout process.
Using the information from our open card sort and guided by the top level tasks our users want to accomplish, I define a site architecture with industry standard categories as a foundation.
SITE MAP
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From here we created a site map to get a better sense of the layout and navigation:
After initial usability testing on the original De novo website and affinity mapping, I came up with a simple layout by making some changes like Top navigation and footer, sold sign on the image itself, and changed the language on add to cart.
USER FLOW
We mapped out the one of the purchasing pattern of Emma in a user flow diagram:
SCENARIO
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Emma goes to the de novo website and looks for earrings to buy. Using this scenario as a guide, I create a User Flow to capture what a User's journey through the application should look like given the parameters of our MVP.
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Design
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After making the rough sketches for ideation, I worked on digital adaptations of my sketches and created wireframes. A handful of wireframes for the landing page and product page. Here are a few sample screens:
Home page
Product page
In order to improve the usability testing of designs, I conducted usability testing on low fidelity prototype. With design decisions confirmed, I created the final high fidelity prototype of our MVP
"Jewelry is a very personal thing... it should tell a story about the person who's wearing it."
HIGH FIDELITY​
Our high fidelity prototype for de novo
I worked hard to deliver the high fidelity prototype on a very impacted timeline. Here are a few highlights of the high fidelity prototype for redesigned
Original site- Navigation was confusing and overwhelming and images on home page made customers shop on the home page itself
Redesigned site- Simplified top Navigation and New Arrivals on home page
Original site- Name of the artist was not mentioned under list of artist which was very frustrating for customers
Redesigned site- Navigation was clear as it shows the name of each designer which makes it easier to shop
Original site- Customers get to know that item is sold only when they click on product and that made negative effect and made lot of customers leave the site.
Redesigned site- Brief detail mentioned on the product page which makes it easier for customer to know which product is available and which one is sold
Original site- Buy and cart buttons were confusing to all customers. They thought buy button is for billing and cart button is for adding item to the cart which in-fact takes customer to the empty cart
Redesigned site- Detailed description of item and changed buy and cart button to Add to Cart
REFLECTIONS
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Working on de novo fine designer jewelry has been one of my most formative experiences as a designer and I grew in many areas and learned valuable lessons such as:
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Research and usability testing are the key for redesigning better site
It is critical to remain flexible and adapt to changes- rarely do things go exactly as planned
Working in Figma was a game changer
Affinity mapping is a powerful research synthesis method to uncover key user insights
Deliver
PROTOTYPE
Prototype
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