Splendid Homes
Proudly serving ever-E1 since 1964
Project Overview
Summary
Splendid Homes pride themselves on being Aldgate’s best-for-service housewares stores. Whether you’re popping in for a toaster or a toilet brush, they’ll take the time to make your experience a pleasant one. The problem is that, although their loyal customers are happy with continuing to buy locally from Splendid, the store is missing out on providing to a wider customer base. They want to provide an eCommerce solution to cast a wider net.
Brief
A new e-commerce website to showcase Splendid’s highly-curated products whilst maintaining their brand image.
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The solution:
Must
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Have clear ways of locating specific products
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Support a single page for each product which can be linked to directly
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Have an efficient way of purchasing one or more products
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Steer customers toward popular products
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Establish the brand and it’s points of difference
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Allow customers to contact the business (including to request a product not otherwise stocked)
Should
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Allow customers to browse products related to their current selection
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Allow customers to read and write reviews of a product
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Provide information about the store’s heritage
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Reward loyalty for repeat customers
Could
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Allow customers to shop by major brands
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Allow for multiple images per product
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Adapt the experience appropriately across desktop and mobile
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My role
This was a solo concept project which followed the British Design Council’s Double Diamond process with its four phases: Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver.​
Source: The Design Council
Key deliverables
A number of deliverables were required for the project, including:
Results
I managed to achieve the project brief requirements by providing a final hi-fidelity prototype, having gone through several processes of the Double-Diamond to get to that point. It follows a happy path of a customer who is looking to buy a barista coffee machine for a friend's housewarming present.
I received positive feedback for my solution:
There were also a number of personal learnings I took away from this project - I think the main learnings for me on this project was the techniques used to get to the final solution. For example, doing the cart sort to establish the taxonomy of the site was a useful (albeit tedious) task, as it helped with the structuring the site.
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It was great to work on the project to practice the theory of the Double-Diamond.
Discovery
The first diamond helps people understand, rather than simply assume, what the problem is. It involves speaking to and spending time with people who are affected by the issues.
Competitor Analysis
The first step of this journey was to analyse who Splendid’s competitors are so that I could understand what potential features to include in my design.
Contextual Inquiries
In order to understand who the users of Splendid Homes, I went out to the local area to conduct contextual inquiries with people shopping at Inspitalfields and Flying Tiger. These were the stores in the local area that closely matched what Splendid offers.
Numerous questions were asked (depending on how the conversation was going):
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What are you here for today?
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Did you come here for something specific?
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Do you live locally? Or did you travel specifically to be here?
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Why in person today rather than shopping online?
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How was your shopping experience today? Why?
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The main observations from these inquiries were that many people were not from the local area but came into store to browse and also actually see the products in person.
User Interviews
By conducting user interviews, I was able to understand the shoppers mentality and the way that they shop. It was interesting to find out how habits and trends change over time. For example, one interviewer had initially kitted her house out in Ikea furniture but now that she has settled in, she is avoiding the big brands.
Definition
The insight gathered from the discovery phase can help you to define the challenge in a different way.
Persona
By using the information from the user interviews, I was able to come with a persona for Splendid homes. The information within the persona influenced later stages within this project.
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My user persona was Karen:
Card Sorting
Having been given an inventory of 70+ stock items, I had to establish the structure of the site and its navigation. The first set of activities to establish this was an open and closed card sort.
Within the first 3 rounds of open card sorting it was clear that there were common categories that could be used for the structure.
From the closed sessions I was able to establish my final categories for the site navigation:
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Cooking
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Equipment
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Serving
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Cleaning
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Decorations
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Party
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Cutlery
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Baking
Hierarchy & Structure
In terms of taxonomy, I took a logical approach to establish the hierarchy of the site. My navigation took into consideration industry standard designs - based on competitive analysis observations - and the construct from the card sorting activities.
The structure broke the navigation into primary, secondary and tertiary, with each of these having sub-levels if required.
User Journey
Having the persona riding along, the next stage was to establish the journey they were going to take. For the context, the project brief was used i.e. a local resident is looking for inspiration for a housewarming gift for a close friend who has just moved into a new flat.
The journey begins with the news of the housewarming party and ends with the user receiving the housewarming gift before the event.
The user flow revolves around the users interaction with Splendid’s website, i.e. they’d come into the picture when the user is browsing for a product (may come in through a Google search) and exit having checked out on the site. It could potentially include the customer receiving the item, as the company is still involved until that point. They may even provide after-sales care.
User Story
To take the context further and bringing Karen deeper into the journey, as user story was established as well as the happy path in order for her to achieve that goal.
Development
The second diamond encourages people to give different answers to the clearly defined problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.
Low-Fidelity Prototyping
This stage involved developing many iterations of the potential prototype. Going from low to mid fidelity, I would conduct user testing after the next 'draft' was complete.
The key concerns were mainly categorisation. Some suggested that a separate ‘electrical appliances’ category would be more useful.
Some of the CTAs were difficult to spot in the sub-category levels for some users. These considerations were implemented into the next iterations of the prototype. Some of these will be implemented in the Future Considerations.
Mid-Fidelity Prototyping
I was able to iterate my designs to mid-fidelity by incorporating the feedback and making the changes that I felt were necessary:
Delivery
Delivery involves testing out different solutions at small-scale, rejecting those that will not work and improving the ones that will.
Hi-Fidelity
Having conducted all of the user research and low/mid-fi prototype testing, I created the final prototype:
Outcomes
Results
The outcomes / final solution phase included:
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the presentation
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the results
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future considerations
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Overall, feedback for the project was positive and users had comments like:
“Great! I can see a good tool to filter at the moment”
“I can easily click on a product and I can change the quantity”
“Good product features, images - photos go through so you can see previous and next”
Future Considerations
For the next steps, I am thinking of developing the following functionality:
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a wishlist, so that customers can add items that they're considering purchasing
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my account/registration, so that customers do not need to re-enter their details every time they visit the site
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product comparison, so that customers can compare similar products that they are considering
Personal Learnings
I think the main learnings for me on this project was the techniques used to get to the final solution. For example, doing the cart sort to establish the taxonomy of the site was a useful (albeit tedious) task, as it helped with the site structure.
Another key learning point was realising that I need to rein in my eagerness to jump fidelity levels. I was excited to play with branding and colours when that was not necessarily the ask of the project brief. However, this eagerness did not negatively impact the delivery of the project.