G
SIMPLE
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Role
UX designer
UI designer
Deliveriables
User research, Journey map, Persona, Usability test, Wireframe, UI and prototype
Timeline
2 months
Type
Academic project
What is the context?
The COVID-19 pandemic produced a run on the things people need to make their food at home, including vegetable seedlings, seeds and chooks. As well as hitting the garden centres, people looked online for information on growing food.
"The pandemic clearly motivated many people to garden more this year."
Lisa Mullins, one of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab’s research associates and lead author of the report.
Challenge
Discover pain points of the current shopping experience and propose solutions to improve user experience
Problem Statement
Finding advice isn't straightward
Many Australian households chose to grow some of their food in the yard from 2020-to 2021. I identified the problem space when I noticed anxious people often worrying about reaching out for advice about the planting issue.
Opportunity
How might we create a platform that can exchange experiences between local specialists and garden lovers?
The goal
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Provide gardening advice in an effective way.
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Build trust relationship with customers
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Connect local community resident in exchange gardening experience via online or offline
The solution
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Clear, simple easy to navigate layout
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Quick search by keywords
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Share plateform
The outcome
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5 out of 5 people could find the search button in five seconds
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4 out of 5 people could navigate between different section
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5 out of 5 people find share section benefits their experience
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4 out of 5 people run smoothly in the shopping process
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4 out of 5 people click the plus button and find it helpful
The Process
Empathy
Research plan
My research plan lists assumptions, research goals, methodologies, findings and participants
Assumptions
I hypothesized the current e-commerce business may have the following problems:
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Not clear web-flow, not user friendly For example they don’t highlight the keywords, both the content are the same size, not a good experience for users with assistant technology.
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Too much information Some websites display overload, too much information on the product description page, resulting in users not being able to complete tasks.
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Have a question but wait for a long time Current website offers a Blog section, which talks about general caring tips and popular varieties. They are not exactly what the user wants, they may be helpful but not really solve the user's needs.
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Can’t find what I am looking for Search engines can easily find it on the top of the site, but some plants have long names, you have to spell exactly the same words, for example in terms of Murraya paniculata Orange Jasmine, these four words have to be in the right order.
Competetive analysis
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During this time I conduct a competitive audit which collects key direct and indirect competitors' strengths and weaknesses.
Some oppotunities i identified:
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Create fully responsive design
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Provide clear layout for browsing product
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Delivery professional advise and allow people can share and exchange experience
Research goal and methodologies
Pain points and insights
Persona
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
User Journey map
Define
The Original Problem Statement
Kitty is a busy working garden lover who needs to reach useful growing advice but waits for a long time and sometimes is useless.
I synthesized my research and collated all the important nuggets of information from the research to form the Affinity and Empathy maps. The insights that I uncovered led me to realize that my problem statement had changed. At this point I pivoted to craft another problem statement that I felt was now relevant. I didn’t expect to find that
New Problem Statement
Australian who lose patience when they wait for response, and search for local specialist’s tips but feel disappointed.
Ideate
With Kitty and John's pain points and problem statement, I started the“ How Might We” exercise to begin thinking of ideas to solve their issues
Opportunities
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How might we improve the UI to appear cleaner and easier to use?
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How might we add a search function to make it easier to find plants, like flowers or herbs?
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How might we build effective customer service?
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How might we set local specialist’s advice which include simple layout with key words, showing the user their growing process?
After this, I completed the Crazy Eights exercise with Kitty's issues with our How Might We questions in mind.
Prototype
After validating our Lo-Fi prototype we made iterations to our design, and moved into Hi-Fi phase. I created Hi-Fi assets for the buyer's flow including home page, sign up process, searching for plants, and browsing the guide article.
全部影片
Validate
After thoughts
My job is to make this experience Simple, better, accessible and intuitive.
The simple garden is my first academic and unique project that resonates with my life experiences. I love to see my vege grow but spend too much time watching videos and long articles reaching the answers. As we face a global pandemic, I intend to respond to social isolation by providing more helpful tips to people in this project. Once users are happy with the design suggestions, we can help them realize the vision by building raised veggie beds; they will find everything on our web.
Find the problem, get the opportunity and solution.
By conducting research, I have a challenge: how can I design a website that helps people from different lifestyles and fulfils the user's needs so the idea" shop and share" came out? Combining shop and share can bring lots of users back to the web again. I learned from this project is even tiny design changes can have a massive impact on users' experience. The most important take ways is to focus on users' actual needs when coming up with new design ideas and solutions. Also, this project taught me how to design across numerous media touchpoints and develop a product strategy aligned with a company's brand and concept. In summary, given a budget and time, I would like to organize and conduct paid usability tests to dive deeper to understand what else users want.
In the end, thanks for your time!