House2Home

Overview

House2Home is an e-commerce website that sells home decor items and accessories; they want to increase revenues and diversify their customer base by focusing on offering a new “starter kit” product line. “Starter kits'' are pre-assembled, curated bundles of decor items (pillows, wall hangings, candles, etc) that can be used to furnish a home at a competitive price. Target customers are budget and time conscious; they don’t want to spend an immense amount of money nor time guessing what looks good in their spaces and what decor items go well together. My role using lean UX was to research and offer the best solution in which to present their new product.

Context and Scope

House2Home is a 5-day Google Venture design sprint with a prompt provided by BiteSize UX. I was able to work with a fictional company and their business needs while using lean UX to solve their problem.

 The Problem

How might we offer “starter kits” to customers that not only showcases the new product line but also presents as a great answer to the customer’s need of being time and budget conscious?

My Hypothesis

I think by incorporating dedicated web pages to “starter kits”, House2Home will be able to display their new offering and customers will see the value in the kits that are being offered.

Day 1 - Map

Based on House2Home’s goal of helping customers with starter kits, I proceed to map out possible end-to-end user experiences.  Since House2Home already sells home decor, I think about possible ways the user might see the new offering.  Some of the aspects I thought about was how to present the starter kits to the customer.  For example, will the user choose an item they are interested in before being shown the rest of the kit?  Will the user find the starter kits after choosing a specific room? 

Day 2 - Research and Sketch

On the beginning of Day 2, I researched competitors, their products and their layouts. I was able to draw inspiration from what they did well.

Using the later half of Day 2, I drew Crazy 8 Sketches - Variations of the most critical screen. My thoughts on the most critical screen is getting the user to see the starter kits offered by House2Home. Customers mentioned wanting to save time and wanting to make sure the decor they bought were cohesive.

Day 3 - Decide

On Day 3, I chose 4 potential solutions from the Crazy 8 Sketches that I thought might be valuable to explore.

Final Solution Sketch

From the 4 potential solutions, I chose the first solution as best to implement.  Thinking back on my hypothesis, I think using dedicated web pages will exhibit the new offering and give customers the opportunity to see the value in the kits being offered.  The first solution does this due to its simplicity and straightforwardness.

• The first screen shows all the starter kit options offered to the user.

• The middle is the most critical screen.  It shows the starter kit chosen by the user.  It will have 1 room inspiration photo.  This will give a sense of style and mood to the user.  The starter kit’s individual items will be listed below the inspiration photo and show item details.  

• The last screen confirms the starter kit has been added to the basket and offers the user the opportunity to check-out.

Storyboard

Reading from left to right; the user would land on the homepage and select the starter kit button.  Different options would be shown and the user can choose the one that interests them.  The user can also swap out items from the premade starter kit with other decor from the same collection, using the mix and match option.  The user then adds to the basket and continues with the checkout process.

 Day 4 - Prototype

My prototype is integrating starter kits onto the website for House2Home in a user friendly way.  The business wants to promote their starter kits line and based on customer feedback, it’s a viable idea.  My thought process was to be simple and direct.  Selling multiple items involves a lot of information along with different variables, so I want to present this clearly and easily to the user.

Click here for the prototype.

With the way I chose to present the starter kits and the way they are packaged to be sold, I want to learn the following:

• Do users see all the features offered?  Example: stylist, mix and match, visuals. 

• Is the starter kit page clear in its offerings?

• Do users understand how to use the starter kit / a la carte feature?

• Is the starter kit page clear?  How could it be improved?

• What changes would the user like to see?

Day 5 - Test

I virtually tested 5 users, ages 25- 34, who fall within the target segment of budget and time-conscious shoppers, using the Marvel app prototype.  The majority of what I want to learn pertains to the starter kit page where the user can purchase the kit as presented or modify it to their liking.  I wanted to test if this page was clear and easy to use, and to gain insight on what the user thought.

The majority of users saw the value in the House2Home starter kits.  While none of the users would have chosen to buy the starter kit as presented, they liked how they could adjust the offering by mixing and matching.  However, the mix and match feature was not immediately noticed. It did take time for 60% of the users to understand they could swap out items in the starter kit.  This could lead to user frustration and loss of sales for House2Home.  Making sure the mix and match feature is distinguished on the page is imperative for the starter kits page success.  Some of the changes that users would like to see include wanting to have the a la carte price already listed, being able to personalize the starter kits more easily, and having the option to view all the items pictured for sale.

Conclusion

For this 5-day Google Venture design sprint, I had a great time seeing how efficient and quickly the processes could be implemented to solve real problems.

My next steps for House2Home would be to make the changes the users called out, for example, having prices listed on the individual items in the starter kit. I would also like to conduct A/B testing to see if users enjoy selecting individual items themselves more instead of seeing a pre-determined grouping as offered in my prototype. Considering most of the testers would not purchase the starter kit as is, I think this would be an excellent idea to look into.

Click here for the final prototype.