Case study 2
Jacob Willard Home
Client
Jacob Willard Home
Timetable
June 2019 - Oct 2019
Tools
Sketch, Figma, Trello, Optimal Workshop, Google Forms
My Role
Discovery, User Research, Information Architecture, Interaction and UI Design
Background
Jacob Willard Home (JWH) is a small, independent Mid Century furniture and audio shop in Hillman City, Seattle. Passionate about furniture and music, the owner wants to share his passion with the local community. Opened 9 years ago, the store recently launched a website to build awareness.
As part of my UX certificate program, I met with the owner to better understand the business needs.
Business Opportunity
As a one-person business, the owner focused energies on establishing and growing the business. Collaborating with the owner, I identified JWH had limited customer research. The owner recognized the importance of customer insight, so I set a goal to research customer motivations, while evaluating the efficacy of the website.
My Role
For this solo student project, I was responsible for all UX and UI design.
Research
“I want to know as much
detail about a piece of
furniture before I buy. I am buying its history.”
Through competitive analysis of local and national furniture retailers, a content audit and heuristic review, I distilled two research objectives:
Assess current and perspective customer needs and purchasing behavior.
Assess the usability of the current website.
These objectives guided generative research through qualitative interviews with one current and two perspective customers. Quantitive survey, with 17 respondents, focused on three key areas:
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What are customers' furniture shopping habits?
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What information influences online furniture purchases?
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How easy is it to navigate the current site?
_Participant 3
Participant
Affinity Mapping
Participant
Key Findings
I want the option to buy online
Customers expect e-commerce functionality.
I want to navigate
Site navigation gives customer control of their shopping experience.
Information is king
Customers need product dimensions and imagery to make an informed purchase. The unique history behind a piece of furniture is also relevant to customers.
Trust is important
Customers want to know the brand story behind an independent shops. This builds trust and a connection with the owner.
Customer research created a great foundation to identify and prioritize website improvements.
Information
Architecture
Since research identified the need for global navigation, content modeling helped inform potential categories. Three open card sessions offered the opportunity to refine categories, observing how users organize content that makes sense to them.
Content Model
Using Optimal Workshop, I created on online card sorting exercise with 14 participants, resulting in a similarity matrix and dendrogram that helped distill global navigation into five core categories:
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Collections
- Audio
- Refurbishment
- About
- Contact
Based on research results, the following utility navigation items were added: search functionality, account login, e-commerce cart and favorites.
The footer was also redesigned to increase functionality, adding global navigation and capturing emails addresses for future promotions. Two additional social media channels were added to the footer; Pinterest and YouTube. Pinterest was highlighted in customer research as a useful destination, while YouTube channel would provide a platform to showcase refurbishment videos.
Dendrogram
Similarity Matrix
Participant
Sample card sorting results
Global Navigation
Design Explorations
Moving into the next development phase, I used the following statement to jump start brainstorming and ideation:
How might we make the JWH website informative, trustworthy & intuitive
Research and IA results helped to prioritize ideation and wireframing with three key examples below:
Product Page
New individual furniture pages provide product dimension, descriptions, price and multiple photos, with links to related products.
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Shopping Cart
New e-commerce experience offers users flexibility to add items to cart and continue shopping.
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Desktop Navigation
New global navigation was introduced to establish top-level categories with search functionality and e-commerce incorporated in the utility navigation. Users can now create an account, save favorite images and view shopping basket. Secondary navigation allows easy access to website content.
Footer content was expanded to include global navigation, email capture, and additional media channels.
Mobile Navigation
New global navigation provides flexibility and access to content above the fold line.
Final Designs
Below are the research-led desktop and mobile high fidelity designs. For brand consistency, fonts and brand colors are carried over from the current website.
Current Homepage
Proposed Homepage
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1. Global navigation with secondary utility navigation was added with clear signposting to build trust with users
Fold line
2. Highlights new arrivals with links to individual product pages
3. Dedicated section to JWH brand story
4. Video highlights custom refurbishment opportunities
5. Curated favorites
6. Footer with email capture and expanded social links
Proposed Product Page
Proposed
Shopping Cart
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Fold line
1. Breadcrumb provides contextual navigation
2. Multiple images of product
3. Product description with dimensions and furniture care techniques. Option to share on social media
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4. Curated complementary furniture
1. Basket icon indicates number of items in cart
2. Order summary. Users can review purchase and proceed to checkout, or continue shopping
3. Items in cart with shopping options
Current Mobile
Experience
Proposed Mobile Experience
Home Page
Product Page
Shopping Cart
Fold line
Summary
At the end of the project, I presented the results to the owner. Customer research had highlighted an opportunity to redesign the existing website, addressing key customers' needs:
Customers expect e-commerce functionality, so e-commerce functionality was added with a shopping cart page.
Customers expect website navigation, so global, secondary and utility navigation was created to increase usability.
Customers use product dimensions and imagery to make an informed purchase, so individual product pages were created, highlighting unique product features.
Customers want to know the brand story behind independent shops to help build trust, so a page was added dedicated to JWH and its connection to the local community.
Looking forward, there are several areas which could be further explored:
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Usability testing
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Expanded customer research
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Validate global and secondary navigation
Learnings
The voice of the customer was limited in the research results due to time constraints. Ideally, I would like to expand the research pool to speak to more current and perspective customers, and further explore the physical and digital shopping experiences.
I would like to thank Jacob Willard Home for the opportunity to collaborate with them on this project. Furniture imagery is courtesy of jwillardhome.com
Case study 1