House2Home

A house decoration eCommerce site designed for residents to recreate their style at home.

Want to decorate your place like an interior designer? You have an idea but didn't know how to recreate the style? No worries! House2Home hears you.

Modified Design Sprint with House2Home

Design Sprint In A Solo Team

After reading several articles about design sprint, my curiosity got me to wonder how I would feel about generating a solution within 5 days? Would the solution be effective with this short amount of time? It turned out the process was more intense than I thought, but I've successfully defined a solution and a prototype within 5 days.

The main goal of this practice is to learn the GV Design Sprint process, and I was the only team member in the process, so I decided to try a modified design sprint.

In this modified design sprint, each “day” would be a few hours, so time in this challenge was strict.

The Challenge

It is exciting to move into a new place, but sometimes decorating the interior could overwhelm users with too many choices. Chelsea is once such user. She moved into a studio apartment and went furniture shopping after finding interior design inspiration on Pinterest. But when she brought all of her furniture home, she realized that none of it went together.

Budget is also a concern for someone like Chelsea. She has a hard time finding decoration she likes that is also within her price range.

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GOALS

Design an eCommerce website for users to find decorations and recreate their interior like an interior designer.

ROLE

User Research
User Experience Design
Brand Design

SCOPE

Personal Project
IOS App Design

DURATION

3 months

TOOLS

Figma
After Effect

ROLE

User Research
User Experience Design

SCOPE

Personal Project
IOS App Design

DURATION

3 days

TOOLS

Figma

Users & Problems

Define

‍Understand our client and the problem

House2Home is the stakeholder of this design sprint, and they are selling home decors and accessories through their eCommerce website. The goal of House2Home is to help users to find decorations without feeling overwhelmed.

‍Understand the characteristics of the target audience

Looking to buy multiple items
Just moved into a new place
Interior design novice

Persona

‍Frustration
Doesn’t know what to buy and feels overwhelmed on recreating her room.

‍Needs
Needs help to purchase multiple items and style them like an interior designer under $250.

‍Goal
Designs the interior with a coastal style that can brighten up the studio.

Sketch

‍Crazy 8 of the critical screen (8 minutes only)

Budget is the key constraint during a shopping process, therefore the screen that shows the interior design packages with the price and the numbers of items is the critical step. I spent 8 minutes to sketch 8 possibilities of the critical step, then the Crazy 8 method led me to a solution by displaying the price range on the left and design packages on the right. This way users can filter the price and the style without going to several pages.

Prototype

Convert the sketch to a realistic prototype

Finally, it's time to make this sketch into high fidelity mockups. I understand the handwriting could be bothering, but sketching should be disposable. Since time is sensitive and limited in this challenge, so spending too much time to perfect the sketch of a concept that could fail would be a waste of time.

“Design isn’t finished until somebody is using it."

Testing

Verify the solution by usability testing

I was surprised and happy to see that 5 out of 5 participants felt the overall experience was intuitive and thought the design instruction was helpful to recreate their new place. This feedback proves the solution was a successful concept that was worth the time to continue.

By providing the price range function to accommodate the budget constraint, all the users thought this function was helpful to target the design packages under the budget.

Furthermore, it was easy for them to find multiple items based on their style with low commitment. The flexibility to add or remove items based on their preferences was a huge plus. No one will be happy to be forced to do something, and the flexibility empowers users to buy something based on their willingness.

What I have learned from House2Home Design Sprint

01 LEARNING

The design package feature is a huge help on making decision

Too many options can be overwhelming, so the package features helped streamline finding items that matched a user's design style.

02 LEARNING

The price filter looks simple but brings a high impact on search

Budget is a major consideration during the shopping process, so the price range function ensures the total amount can stay under the budget. This strategy creates a flawless experience and guides users to place an order faster through House2Home.

03 LEARNING

Curiosity lasts patience longer

The quiz-style triggers users’ curiosity and shows all the styles as the first step to help keep the users staying longer on the site.

The Final Solutions

Package. Budget. Guideline.

Package Deal

Provide starter kits to recreate preferred styles

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Once House2home receives users’ favorite style, House2home will narrow down the style and show all the packages with the number of items.

Budget Filter

‍The price range looks simple but brings a high impact

The price range filter feature facilitates the process of sorting design packages by price. This filter function helps users to find multiple decors and ensures the spending is under the budget.

Design Guideline

Send guidelines along with the purchased items
House2Home sends the design guideline in the packages and email to help users design their place with the purchased decorations.

Try out House2Home prototype

SEE PROTOTYPE

Prototype Key Screens

SELECT A STYLE

Chelsea can narrow down the design packages by choosing her favorite style.

DESIGN PACKAGE WITHIN BUDGET

Users can find design packages within their budget using the price range function.

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MORE OR LESS

Show the items of the package in detail with an editable quantity function. With this flexibility, Chelsea can add or remove the items based on her preference.

Curiousity

I understand this is a quick design sprint and I should stop at the last step which is testing, but I'm curious about how the feedback can improve the experience,

Design Iteration With User Feedback

Confusion 01: Items in the detail screen caused hesitance to continue

Some users thought the price includes all the decors on this screen and didn’t realize only the first three decors were included in the package. Users took almost 30 seconds to understand what was included in the package and what wasn't.

Solution 01: Add a title and checkmarks

Move the price bar and add a title on this screen helps differentiate the included decoration section and the add-on decoration section. Moreover, the checkmark icon visually indicates that the Sunny Mini Set only includes these four decors.

Confusion 02: Image were distracting

Adding images when mentioning style led some users in the wrong direction because each image has a different style, so when users saw this question, they felt all the areas in this screen were missing their preferred style.

Solution 02: Remove images and leave the text alone

When users need to focus on the content, multiple images only cause distraction. So only display one image will lead users to focus on the selections, which is more intuitive to understand the task is to choose an area.

More information?

LinkedIn Me!

Happy to introduce House2Home in detail

Did I successfully arouse your curiosity? Feel free to send me a message through LinkedIn if you are interested in learning the whole process of House2Home. I'm more than happy to present the thorough case study of House2Home design sprint challenge.

LinkedIn Me!

Would like to know more in detail of how I discovered the insights to build House2Home?

Send a message to me and I would be more than happy to go through a 15 minutes presentation with you.

Detail in:

Crazy 8
Design Decision
Design Iteration

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