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Grand Days Project

UX Concept Design

Quick Project Overview 

Client:
Grand Days
*conceptual 

My role:
Solo UX Designer  

Duration:
Two weeks sprint   

Project Tools:

  • FigJam

  • Trello Board

  • Figma

  • Google Forms

Project Goal:
Translating the brick & mortar experience to an eCommerce bookshop.

Highlights

  • Successful Usability Test, all the users have finalised the archetype’s User Flow presented in the scenario: to buy The Dress Up Box Experience. Therefore the archetype is ideally satisfied.

  • With the main roadblocks removed, an increase in sales is expected.

  • The website's front page effectively communicates that Grand Days is a bookstore selling collectable items.

Key takeaways

Be clear about project goals and flexible about how to achieve them, thus never get attached to your design. Choose the better tool to make changes!

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Understanding the client's goals and constraints is critical to developing feasible design solutions.

 

Develop, test, iterate. Repeat!  

The Client

Grand Days independent bookshop based in Sydney-Australia.
In their own words - Grand Days is about the tactile, books, fashion, records, jewellery, and collectables. The stuff of art, culture, society, and history. We offer the opportunity to tread an unexpected path, to be surprised and excited by a timeless classic, an obscure album, a book that has travelled the world and had numerous lovers or been faithful to the one companion.

 

Design Process:
Project's Double Diamond

Sitemap 

To start the design process, I first needed to get familiarised with Grand Day's website content. A Sitemap allowed me to visualise the current structure of the online store.  

Insights

During the Sitemap development, I was able to identify some pages leading to errors - Heuristics bottleneck - and spelling mistakes. 

Heuristics Evaluation

  • The landing page is confusing and misleading; it doesn’t convey what Grand Days is about

  • Informational Structure doesn’t match the actual content, leading the user to errors: about section leading to opening hours and contact; shop online leading to shipping and policies.

  • UX Writing is not clear.

  • Low-quality photos of the products

  • Products lacking clear and appealing descriptions. 

  • The product that expresses Grand Days' UVP - The Dress Up Box Experience - is not easily purchased, the description is confusing, and there’s no clarity about how to answer the required questions.  

Insights

Some assumptions were made during the Heuristics Analysis, but they were validated afterwards during Online Survey and Contextual Inquiry.

Document well all the design process, especially methods that involve third parties.

Online Survey | Contextual Inquiry

The first contact with the website is confusing because of the main picture - it does not convey what Grand Days is about. 

An Online Survey and Interviews were performed to validate the assumption that the picture is misleading. None of the answers was related to a bookshop.

Survey question:

If you reach a website and the first thing you see is the image below, what would you think their product/service is about?


Answers:
"Gentlemen's club"
"Perfume"
"They sell womenswear or dresses."
"Fashion/clothes shop"
"Clothes-perfume"
"Something related to fashion"
"Women's clothing or an event venue"

Archetype | Scenario

Spontaneous Selector

"Life is too short to overthinking things."

Behaviours and Attitudes:​

  • Loves chance discoveries

  • Doesn’t specifically buy products because they are popular and on-trend

  • Buys when something comes onto radar, rather than when specifically looking for something

Needs and Goals:

  • Wants to live exciting experiences 

  • Likes to find the unexpected 

  • Loves to share his experiences with friends 

Frustrations:

  • Quickly gives up on complicated purchases 

  • Thinks that it is not easy to find interesting products to purchase

  • Doesn’t like to spend his time with boring or popular products/services

Scenario: The Spontaneous Selector wants to buy a unique product that allows him to live an exciting buying experience, but he feels frustrated when he only finds popular products or when the purchasing is complicated; as a result, he frequently gives up on buying processes. 

Mid-Fi Figma Prototype Demo

Usability Test Results

Five Usability Tests with the Mid-Fi Wireframes were conducted, and the results have shown that the users were able to buy The Grand Days Dress-up Box Experience and a book recommended by the Grand Days community seamlessly.

Next Steps

Following the design process, the next steps would be discussing the feasibility of the design solution with the client, developing the Hi-fidelity version, testing it, assessing the results, and iterating.

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