SAKSHI AGGARWAL
The Project
Wuffkart is an Ecommerce and content driven platform specially designed and tailored for pet owners looking for One place which is promising enough to provide all essentials of pet from food to all the accessories and medical services with it’s ‘VET LINE’ .
Duration: 3 months
Methods: Surveys, Interviews, A/B Testing, Sketches, Affinity Mapping, Wireframes, Prototyping, Card Sorting, Phone Interviews
Tools: Figma, Balsamiq, Canva
Context
Idea generation
One of my cousins bought a puppy and as he lives in my neighbour, I saw him raising his pet with some difficulties, like lack of availability of pet products in a single shop also, there wasn't any pet clinic nearby. So, after analysing and after doing some research, I landed on one result that there isn't any platform which satisfies all the needs of the pet owners. That's where I came up with an idea to create a single platform for them.
Objective
To make an e commerce website with content centric approach which fulfills all the basic needs of every Pet.
The Process
Research
Competitor Analysis
To get a clear understanding of the market, I analysed some of the most common websites which a pet owner uses to fulfils their needs of pets and found that while those website provide only tangible products like every other e commerce store and were not adding any further value to it’s users, products were scattered on some websites and weren’t under specific category which makes it difficult to find the product.
Keeping an aim of understanding the problems faced by pet owners in buying pet products and getting right knowledge about the pets in I surveyed 35 pet owners via questionnaire and personal interview to understand the following points:
To get a clear understanding of the market, I conducted analyses of the most common websites which a pet owner uses to fulfils their needs of pets and found that while those website provide
Surveys & Interviews
To get a clear understanding of the market, I conducted analyses of the most common websites which a pet owner uses to fulfils their needs of pets and found that while those website provide only tangible products like every other e commerce store and were not adding any further value to it’s users, products were scattered on some websites and weren’t under specific category which makes it difficult to find the product.
Keeping an aim of understanding the problems faced by pet owners in buying pet products and getting right knowledge about the pets in I surveyed 35 pet owners via questionnaire and personal interview to understand the following points:
1. Is there any variation in answers with respect to their pet type?
2. To understand the problems faced by pet owners.
3. To understand the mindset of a user who doesn’t have any pet but willing/planning to own one in near future
Key Findings & Insights
Findings
A. Is there any variation in answers with respect to their pet type?
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Owners of Dog and cat have similar answers.
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Owners of other animals share same space.
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Dog is the most popular pet type.
B. To understand the problems faced by pet owners.
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New pet owners find difficulty in choosing the right product for their pets and seek for some guidance.
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85% pet owners agreed they doesn’t like to switch between different websites for their pet needs.
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30% people choose offline mode due to late delivery.
C. To understand the mindset of a user who doesn’t have any pet but willing/planning to own one in near future?
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10 people were interested in buying a pet and 7 out of them didn’t have any knowledge about it.
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All of them wants to get relevant information about their desired pet.
Insights
After analyzing I was able to draw few chief findings that would help in further development of the project.
Single platform for all pet essential needs
People doesn’t’ want to switch on different websites for different tasks (i.e purchasing a product, booking an appointment with vet, reading articles) and expect a single platform to fulfill their pet’s essential needs. This information helped me to decide and introduce relevant services that satisfies user’s demands.
Live chat for support and advisory
New pet owners and people with less knowledge seek for advice or guidance while buying any product or find out the best for them and sometimes they feel lost in website so I decided that there should be chat support throughout to assist users which gives a feeling of assurance.
Quick shopping experience
Since everyone has a tight schedule, people expect a quick shopping experience where they can quickly find a product, place order and receive it quickly without spending much time. I decided to make the website well organized by categorizing every product under its relevant category making it easy to find a product or by enabling predictive search bar so that user need not to enter full name of the product leading to a quick checkout process which saves time of a user.
Affinity Mapping
After Key Findings and Insights I used the method of affinity mapping to organise the data in an accordance to their relationships. It helped me to gather some qualitative information about the users and group the data by category during the brainstorming period of time.
User Stories
Finally, I created user stories that I could use to better understand the potential needs of pet owners, to help decide on the functional requirements for wuffkart, and that I could refer back to throughout the project to keep focused.
Define
Problem Statement
I created user stories so that I could understand the needs of an average pet owner, it will help to me decide to pick the primary required functions for Wuffkart, and also, I can refer to it throughout my project journey,
User Personas
One of my chief findings from my research was that users varies according to their needs, keeping that in mind three user personas were created. I reconceived these user personas to keep in mind about the needs and problems of my users and to maintain a good user experience throughout my project.
Mental Models
After collecting all the research data, I created a MENTAL MODEL for each of the Personas so that I can understand user’s perspective to know how a user might act or click on function to complete a task and I can create a better user experience.
User Flows & Task Analysis
Lastly, I created a task analysis of each persona which gave me better portrait of the of the process that a user will follow to get their desired goal in the most effective manner.
Core Features
With a better idea of my user and their needs, I identified three core features that I wanted to focus on for the product.
Browse & Buy
To provide a quick shopping experience by categorizing products and providing a seamless and quick checkout process with minimum clicks.
Content Centric
To provide all relevant information under various blog posts about pets and by creating a FAQ page so that users can get answers of their question
Online Vet Consult
To provide a section/page on which a user can book an appointment of Vet.
Card Sort
After all the surveys and interviews, to get more clear idea of functional requirements, I conducted a card sort to gain insight for how and where the content should be displayed & organised.
I chose to make closed moderate card sort, where users were asked to organise content into already existing categories.
I conducted card sort with 5 different users at different time, Here are some pictures of how I conducted card sorting with my 1st user.
Sitemap
After analyzing Card sorting I came up the design of my sitemap, Creating a sitemap will help to make the structural layout of my website and it will help me to understand number of pages I need to make and how it will laid out.
Flow Diagram
After creating a sitemap, I then constructed a flow diagram which represents the step- by- step flow of a website for more clarilty and better understanding.
Ideate
With my conducted research, I analysed a clear picture of what my users needed and expected from an e-commerce pet supplies website, I began my ideation process. I made use of low and high fidelity wireframes, as well as prototypes that would make testing easier.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Since a good user interface is one of the basic aims of any design, keeping the number of screens lesser to perform a task makes it easy to use and I wanted to focus on the primary features. I created low fidelity wire frames using pen and paper, I created various combination of functions/features and elements of screens until I found the final combination which matches needs of the user.
High Fidelity Wireframes
After low fidelity, I created high fiedility wireframes to check the actual look of each screen, I used Balsamiq tool for creating wireframes and made a clickable prototype using Figma
Then, I created a clickable prototype, and found some pet owners from my target audience to test them out.
Test
Usability Testing
A/B Testing
In the testing phase of the project, I conducted A/B testing to refine what the users are finding helpful. One of the major finding was on the checkout page where two prototypes were created in which changes were made on the header of the checkout page.
In the first prototype (A version) there wasn't any navigation menu or other icons( home, account, cart) , only logo was kept in the middle of the header.
While, in the second prototype (B version) navigation menu, other icons and logo was kept as it was on all the other pages on the header.
As a result of A/B testing, I concluded that the A version created less distraction to the users, hence higher conversion rate. Whereas, B version distracted many users which resulted in lesser conversion rate.
Phone Interview
Due to lockdown, apart from A/B testing I decided to do the phone interview where I shared the link of the prototype and give users different tasks and interviewed them on phone call asking them directly about the problems they faced or any other suggestions based on their experience.
Iterate
After analysing the data which I collected and taking the feedback from usability test which I conducted, I made some changes to the latest version of Wuffkart as follows :
Design Changes
In previous version of wuffkart, categorisation of the products/type of pet was not done properly and according to the data which I collected, dog being the most popular pet type followed by cat makes it easier for the users to find their desired product as I introduced a separate tabs for both the categories on the home screen.
Another result of the tests conducted was that the users who were interested in reading blog posts wanted to convey a message whether they liked the the blog post or not. So, I introduced an optional feedback box at the end of the page where a user can rate the blog and add some comments regarding the article.
Accessibility
After conducting few tests I found out that the majority of the users wanted to come back to the home screen after they completed their tasks. So, to make it more user friendly I introduced a dedicated home icon on every screen to make it more convenient for the user whenever the user wishes to land on a home screen directly.
Design System Language
Lastly, I created a design system language that could be followed in the future to ensure consistency throughout the app.
Final Product
After many tests and iterations, my final product aligned with all of the objectives I had set in place - it includes the three core features necessary for users to find surf reports quickly and easily, while appearing visually appealing and simple to use.
To view the Final Prototype, click
