Oslo
Role: UX and UI Design Student
Duration: 5 - Day Design Sprint
Skills: User mapping, persona’s, competitor research analysis, sketching, storyboard, prototype, usability testing, and ideation.
Problem: House-2-Home is a company that purely focuses on selling home decor items and accessories. Through customer surveys, House-2-Home has found that many of their customers have just moved into a new home or apartment. Because of this, House-2-Home found an exciting new opportunity to offer “starter kits” for their customers. This is important because due to research, most of their customers are not only new home owners, but many of them are on a tight budget and are unsure of where to start decorating. House-2-Home wants to help users to quickly decorate their new space that they have just moved into.
Solution: When asked to develop a solution for creating “starter kits” for customers, I designed an interactive quiz. This allows the customer to feel excited about design and avoid becoming overwhelmed when looking at the kit selections. I felt that by answering design questions, this would better guide the users to the right “starter kit” for them. This not only curates the perfect kit closest to the customer’s design taste, but gives them the opportunity to feel just as involved in picking out home or apartment decor.
Persona
Day 1
User Map
Competitor Research
FabFitFun is a subscription service that sends out “boxes” 4 times a year. In their boxes, users find a plethora of objects that range from beauty, home and electronics. Although users pay for 4 boxes a year they have access to sales throughout the year. FabFitFun will market certain “boxes” or “sales” towards different categories such as the “Home Edit Sale”.
Critical Screens
Crazy 8’s Sketch Method
Day 2
Due to the nature of a design sprint, it was important that I conduct the crazy 8’s sketch exercise. This is a core method in fast acting and thinking when coming up with solutions. This challenges the designer to create eight distinct and different ideas. This is where I came up with the idea of an interactive quiz.
Habitation Box is a subscription box service that entirely caters to home decor. This subscription service delivers boxes monthly and also has varying tiers of item quality and quantity. They offer 3 different tiers. Habitation Box also allows users to shop their store instead of subscribing to their monthly service. In their online store front, they allow users to purchase past boxes and singular objects alike.
Three-panel Sketch
After conducting the crazy 8’s exercise. I chose to create a quiz for this challenge. Here I came up with a three-panel sketch of my solution. The three-panel sketch includes the screen that comes before the critical screen, the critical screen itself, and the screen that comes after.
Storyboard
On day 3, I decided the best way to proceed with my solution was to create an interactive way that customers could solve their home design problems. I felt that creating a quiz was the perfect way to involve the user. This provides the customer a sense of control whilst still receiving guidance to navigate the website.
Day 3
Day 4
Prototype
Usability Testing
Day 5
Day 5 focused on conducting usability testing on the Oslo prototype. I contacted 5 individuals to interview and test. I allotted 20-30 minutes with each user. During these sessions, I followed the “Five Act Method”.
The “Five Act Method” includes each of these steps: 1. Friendly Welcome, 2. Context Questions, 3. Introduce the Prototype, 4. Tasks, and 5. Quick Debrief.
Conclusion
House 2 Home being my first design sprint, I had no idea what to expect or how much I would achieve in such a short time. I was pleasantly surprised by this experience and I am looking forward to more design sprints in the future. I received great feedback regarding the product and what it can offer for people. I feel more confident in my abilities having done this as a “solo” sprint. This helped me to move past my “perfectionist” attitude which usually holds me back time wise. A few ideas got “lost in the cracks” but this feels typical with a design sprint.
What’s Next:
If I had more time I would love to synthesize my findings, iterate my prototype and do a second round of testing. From there I would elaborate on this project and build a larger prototype. Stay tuned!
HonestDog
Projects
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