House2Home
About House2Home
House2Home is an e-commerce home decor company. Their main users are people who have just moved into a new apartment or home so they wanted to create a starter kit which included wall art, lighting and accent pieces to the user’s taste. The user’s main pain point was not knowing if items they purchased would cohesively look appealing.
Using a modified one-person GV sprint method, I was to create a "Build Your Own Starter Kit" feature to their existing e-commerce site. I found the commonalities in pain points from user interviews and what they enjoyed about home decorating to find a solution. I created a room preview function where users can select items within a design style and virtually decorate a room. This gave the user control yet the ability to visualize their items together.
My Role
Deliverables
- User Map
- Storyboarding
- Sketching
- Competitive Analysis
- High Fidelity Mock-Ups
- Prototyping
- Usability Testing
- User Interface Design
DAY 1 - MAPPING
Problem
New apartment renters and homeowners have trouble decorating their space when they don’t know how it’ll look in their apartment vs. online. People can pin decor they like on Pinterest but when it comes down to decorating their own space, it’s either not in the budget or they could buy it and it doesn’t give the same effect in their own space. Users want to know what looks good in their apt with the look they're going for and in their price range. Users are looking to decorate their space to make it feel homey but don’t want to stay within budget. Some users have a specific look they’re going for but get overwhelmed with the shopping process.
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Start at the End/Long Term Goal
Have each user create their dream space by shopping through the app. Every user finds an item or items that help create their dream look. Each user builds a happy and homey feeling space while sticking to their budget.
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What if it’s not in their budget?
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What if they don’t end up liking what they bought?
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How do they trust the quality of these decisions and what they buy?
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How Might We
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Help users picture what they’d like in their space
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Help users decide what look and feel they’d like
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Inspire users to improve their space decor
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Visualize decor pieces together
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Simplify the shopping process
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Keep users within their personal budget
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Help create a fun visual experience for users
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Find similar style pieces and send to users
DAY 2 - SKETCHING
Lightning Demos
I found Wayfair, Living Spaces and Nordstrom inspiring for users to visually find their style.
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Wayfair
I liked how they categorized each item so it’s easier for users to find a specific item. I was impressed by the 2nd image where it looks like real spaces in a person’s real home and has shopping tags on items you can buy on Wayfair. I felt this gave an authentic feel and also shows how items look together which was a common pain point. You can hover over the item to see the price and if you’re interested you can click on the item and it’ll take you to the detailed page.
Living Spaces
Living Spaces was more upfront about different decor styles. There’s a tab at the top of the home page for Inspiration then different styles and guides. I thought that was nice for people that still want to have some control of what they choose but with some help. Once clicking on a style, it gave a brief description with some photos of what that style is then had a feed of items below that applied to that style. Felt easy to understand the look and to filter through decor items. The 3D room designer seemed innovative in how you can experiment with different ideas without having someone tell you what looks good.
Nordstrom
Nordstrom provided full outfit inspirations with cute descriptions to help users put together a full outfit. They can click on a “look” then see more details on the price and add to cart from that window. I felt it was very easy to visualize the full outfit and “no fuss” with going to different pages to see the details and order.
Crazy 8's
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I selected the “select items” page as the most critical since that’s where most interviewees said they had trouble and how important that process is for House 2 Home itself. Since House 2 Home wanted to focus on building a “starter kit” I wanted to focus on a process where they could choose their style then items within that style were presented to the user to select from. I played with a few ideas on how to select their items by either picking from photos of already styled rooms or from their style selection.
After going through a few of the categories like lighting, prints and small decor items, the items will either be shown in a virtual compilation of their items to confirm if these items are cohesive for them.
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I felt adding the visual aspect to when a user adds a product, felt more interactive, reactionary and instant. Users can decide then if they really like it. It also seemed fun for users to see their vision come alive in realtime. The page before has users select the style that reflects them most, then the page after shows their items all together in a bigger photo along with a summary of their items below the page.
DAY 3 - DECIDE
Storyboarding
Below is a photo of my storyboard sketches for implementing the "Build Your Own Starter Kit" feature. I decided to go with pages where images of either the products, the style or the room preview were the main focus.
DAY 4 - PROTOTYPING
Prototyping is one of my favorite parts of building a product because it illustrates the ideas of the project and makes it more tangible. I found it challenging to not try and perfect every detail of the prototype but to really focus on the main goals of the experience.
I started with recreating the home page from the prompt and adding the Build Your Own Starter kit as the main slider image. From there I had users select a style that resonated with them so they could be presented items with a style they liked. I wanted to make sure when picking a style, users would understand the distinctions between decor styles so I added photos, and descriptions for a quick overview. Once the user selects a style, they’re taken to a preview page where they can add items to the room preview and visualize the item in a virtual space. This allows users to experiment with different items and gives them control and confidence with their purchase. It’s also a fun interactive experience. Users can then build their kit within the 3 categories of wall art, lighting and accent pieces. Finally, users can then see their cart to check out.
DAY 5 - TESTING
I interviewed 5 users who have moved in the past 6 months to test the “build your starter kit” feature. 3 out of the 5 users moved into their new home/apt within the past 2 months. Those three users were interviewed remotely and the two other users were tested in person.
The five interviewees enjoyed the process of building their room with items they’d like to see and said they’d absolutely use this to help decorate their space. The users executed the main task of building their kit flawlessly without assistance. They were pleased by how straightforward it was and took them through steps without it feeling too controlled.
After testing the five interviewees, the most critical feedback from users were they wanted to design for a specific room and see more details about the individual item. Other feedback which was important but less urgent was to be able to move the object within the room preview and to customize the room preview image to a room that best matched their own.
THE FINAL PRODUCT
CONCLUSION
I enjoyed working in a modified GV sprint because there wasn't time to second guess ideas or get stuck on a concept so it felt more productive. Compared to the waterfall method which is more detailed and thorough, I felt like seeing a prototype from ideation after a week was astonishing.
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My biggest challenge was not overthinking an idea and to keep moving forward with the process. I realize I tend to focus on a design detail and struggle moving on until I'm satisfied but sometimes that detail isn't the priority or is already viable so I had to snap out of it, focus on the main objectives and keep up with the sprint tempo. These designs will be tested which will reprioritize functions so in the end, it's harmful to spend time and effort on details that aren't important.