Design Sprint Case Study: A Home Decor Shopping Solution

Helping users find the look they love, at the price they can afford.

House2Home Mobile App Design

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House2Home Mobile App Prototype Video

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Overview

House2Home is a startup working to make it easier for people to decorate their homes and apartments on a budget. It is an e-commerce application that sells home decor accessory items such as, prints, posters, lighting and small accent pieces.

Through user surveys, House2Home discovered that many of their customers have recently moved into a new home or apartment. These customers want to buy multiple decor items for their new space that have a personalized look and feel, but they lack the confidence to do it on their own.

Constraints

• Modified Google Ventures (GV) Design Sprint Framework.

• The product solution needs to be designed as a mobile application.

• 5 day design sprint with a specific task on each day.

• Approximately 5 hour per day sprint exercises.

• The focus is to assist customers who recently moved into a new space and provide them with quick solutions for decor, and supply effective and inexpensive starter kits.

• The company specifically sells small decorative items. They do not sell furniture, appliances, or any larger items alike.

My Role

My role as a UI/UX designer was to run a solo modified Google Ventures design sprint from end-to-end and find solutions to help guide users through new home decor shopping.

This meant that I was responsible for synthesizing all research, user personas, mapping, sketching, wireframes, prototypes, high fidelity mockups, usability testing, interviews and design iterations.

Day 1: Understanding & Mapping

On the first day of my design sprint I reviewed user research to better understand the problem. The research included user interviews and testimonials from customers that had recently moved to a small apartment and needed help choosing small decorative items.

I identified a few key pain points and insights to better understand how to help develop a solution. I used affinity mapping to organize these key pieces of information.

Affinity Map

User in need of decorating assistance.

User Persona

This identified user persona illustrates the pain points and goals of the end-user for which the solution is being designed.

How Might We Problem Statement

I synthesized the available user research to develop a problem statement:

How might we organize decor items by style within the constraints of a users budget?

Mapping

I took to pen and paper to draw a few possible user routes, imagining how a user might purchase decorative items online.

I then decided on the most concise route:

Day 2: Competitive Analysis & Sketching

On Day 2, I workshopped with lighting demos. I reviewed the product solutions of competitors trying to solve a similar problem.

Competitors

I reviewed mobile apps for Wayfair.com and Houzz.com to understand the onboarding, informational hierarchy and organization of visual elements. I also reviewed World Market’s website and found their home decor style guides which read similarly to blog postings. These articles offer users tips and ideas on how to shop by room and decor themes or styles.

I also found that Wayfair.com and Houzz.com use price tag UI elements for decor themed images which allows users to click on individual items from the photo, learn more and add to cart.

Crazy 8’s

I then reviewed my Day 1 map to identify the most critical screen and create 8 quick sketches in less than 8 minutes to ideate possible iterations for a design solution.

The screen I used for this exercise was a style guide theme page. Here, the user would select a style guide theme, enter their budget, scroll through items from this theme, and select items while their cart is calculated at the bottom of the screen.

I created an early sketch of the most critical screen in use:

Day 3: Storyboarding

On Day 3, I created my product solution storyboard to highlight critical actions the user would take to complete a purchase.

I created a Home screen with several style guide themes for the user to browse. I created an optional budget tool for users to input their spending budget. The user can then click an item thumbnail to view more information, return to the browsing screen to add items to their cart, while the cart total displays at the bottom.

Day 4: Prototyping

On Day 4, I created a low fidelity wireframe prototype of my rough sketches. These wireframe screens highlight the key actions of an end user:

High Fidelity Screens

I converted the low fidelity screens into high fidelity screens by adding color, texture, images and other visual design elements. These are some of the key screens to this solution:

House2Home enables users to shop by selected styles curated by industry professionals, helping our users find the looks they love. The budget tool and cart total help find items they can afford.

Users also have the option to shop by room. From here, users can browse photos of themed rooms and easily shop for decor items within the photo.

Simple streamlined checkout process for quick and easy purchasing.

Day 5: Testing

The last day of my sprint was spent on testing my high fidelity mockups using an InVision prototype. I picked users who live in small apartments or living spaces.

Users were given a few tasks to complete as they navigated the prototype. Example of the tasks requested of users:

• “Before you click anything I want you to think aloud about each screen. It will help generate constructive feedback if you can try to think out loud as you go along.”

• “Without clicking any of the icons, describe what you think they will do?”

• “How would you find a decor style?”

Below are some key pieces of feedback I received during usability testing:

“I personally wouldn’t use a budget calculator but could see how some people would. A price range tool is more effective for me..”

“A bolder shopping cart icon or animated icon of some sort would have been helpful..”

“A search filter option to search by item type could be useful.”

Conclusion

I found great deal of value in the 5 day Google Ventures (GV) Design Sprint process. I was able to effectively synthesize the available research, design a solution and test for validation all within five days.

Given the opportunity to continue iterating this design solution I would to incorporate some of the user feedback I received. Additional search functions, a modified budgeting tool and enhanced iconography could take this design to the next level.

I look forward to additional GV Design Sprints as my UI/UX design career continues.

Thank you for reading my case study!