house2home
Modified Google Design Sprint to create a usable and engaging e-commerce platform for home decor enthusiasts on a budget.
ROLE
Product Designer
EXPERTISE
Design Sprint, Wireframing, Protyping
YEAR
2024
Moving into a new apartment is an exciting and overwhelming time. Shopping for home decor shouldn’t add to that stress.
Background
People who move into new homes or apartments want an affordable way to bring their new space to life and sometimes need more time, budget, or knowledge to bring their design ideas to life.
Creating call-to-action prompts, special features and content throughout the user experience led to users feeling more incentivized to upgrade
Based on the research provided due to the time constraints, I came up with the solution of a design bundle based on a style quiz taken by the customer.
This way, the user can feel like they are being included in the design process without doing the heavy lifting. They will also have the opportunity to select different bundles and buy items individually.
The home decor bundles are also a cost-effective way for the user to transform their home, and for House2Home to upsell more items to the user.
Discovering User Needs
Being that this was a modified Design Sprint I was provided user research and my first step was to find common themes on what their pain points were as people who recently moved into a new space and wanted to decorate their space while sticking to a budget.
A snapshot summary of the common pain points are below
users want to spruce up the apartment while sticking to their budget
users need help to bring design inpso to life
users wanted great design with little time and money investment - not super picky
wants to balance quality quantity and budget
moves a lot and doesn't want larger pieces
On day 2, I gathered some baseline research from doing a competitive analysis to see what was already in the market for new apartment renters to find inspiration and affordable home decor options.
HAVENLY
Havenly is a platform that helps customers find their design style and are matched with an interior designer to get 1:1 help in designing their spaces
You can also find decor inspo and shop from different brands
Havenly is a great competitor because it gives the user options to book with a designer, to take a design quiz and find shoppable options for their home
An area of opportunity that i noticed is the site has a high cognitive overload - there is a lot of information to sift through and it can become overwhelmed for the user
APARTMENT THERAPY
Apartment Therapy is a platform with articles to inspire and inform people with design tips for small spaces- More blog style with shoppable links
I would consider apartment therapy a competitor because users are able to find inspiration from other home dwellers based on similar apartment sizes
An area of opportunity is being more clear on the purpose of the site and there are no shoppable links/its hard to save inspiration
Pinterest is a key competitor for finding home decor inspiration, shoppable links and saving inspiration for later.
Creating a storyboard significantly aided in conceptualizing the idea before transitioning it into a digital format.
I decided to go with these screens as the solution screens because they cover the crux of the problem: users need help deciding what to purchase for their new homes and want to stay within budget.
Creating a storyboard significantly aided in conceptualizing the idea before transitioning it into a digital format.
Following that, I dedicated the day to sketching various interactions, ultimately selecting a final flow. Here's the resulting finished product!
Key actions for storyboard:
User taking the style quiz
Selecting image inspiration
Selecting room to add items to
Shopping the selection
Seeing items in bundle
Adding bundle to cart
Browse other bundles
Checkout
My prototype highlights the most important aspects of solving the problem: finding design inspiration and then being able to shop those items based on a style quiz.
The goal is to take the user through a seamless experience that leads to checkout. I hope to learn from user testing if users felt having a style quiz could be helpful in figuring out design inspiration and if the bundles are aligned with their budget and felt valuable to the users. I also would like to see if users would want to see a shop all/individual item selection instead of only buying the bundle.
Link to prototype
On the final day of the Design Sprint, I performed 5 usability tests by pulling from my own social circle, focusing on those who are all at different stages in their home design process.
I was able to interview 5 users who were all at different stages of making their house a home:
Two users recently moved within the last 6 months and were excited to get in and talk about home decor
Two users who have been living in their space for over two years and are more settled into their space
And one who is a home decor enthusiast but likes to shop on a budget
Overall, all the users said that the site functioned in a way that made solving the problem easy. I shared what my problem statement was after they interacted with the prototype because I wanted to see how user-intuitive it was, although the design is pretty straightforward.
The Google Ventures Design Sprint helps Designers make quick decisions while still putting the user first. Through this sprint, I was able to have a larger view of what a real working project/scenario may be like and quickly learned how fast paced and meticulous Product Design really is.
I genuinely hope you enjoyed this case study as much as I did!
If there was a sequel, what would I do differently?
If I had more time/if this was an ongoing project, I would add the following:
A fully detailed product page with individual item listings
A built out cart page
A “see in room” feature - this would be even more helpful for users to see the items in real time and drive sales
More options for the Style Quiz