A Modified Google Ventures Design Sprint for House2Home’s Starter Kits Feature
5 days
Sole UX Designer
Google Ventures Design Sprint
House2Home is an eCommerce website that sells small home decor items. Through a recent survey, they learned that customers want to decorate their new home, but struggle to find the right items and often give up. The challenge I undertook was to create a solution that would enable users to confidently purchase multiple items that would look great in their home.
In this modified Google Ventures Design Sprint, the solution I created was a Design Assistant.
The questionnaire that would be used to thoughtfully create filters without users even realizing it.
Allowing users to feel confident and in control of their purchasing journey while alleviating the stress that typically comes along with it.
In order to determine what needed to be solved, I went through the provided research findings and persona, defined the problem, and mapped out the ideal user journey.
BiteSizeUX provided the user research in the form of user interview notes and established user persona. I began to synthesize the interview findings through affinity mapping to empathize and better understand the users.
Despite knowing the style they wanted to achieve, people didn’t know how to execute it by themselves.
People were highly concerned about how to achieve a desired look while staying within their budget.
Despite being eager to quickly decorate their home, people felt overwhelmed by the shopping process.
I envisioned the journey Ally would take to complete the task of browsing and purchasing a browser kit:
Understanding the user frustrations and pain points, I established the following critical questions which needed to be solved:
”How can I get the look I want within my budget?”
”I’d love to hire an interior designer. It would be amazing to have someone who knows my taste and how to find things to bring the look I want to life.”
”So many items look good in staged photos, but will they look good in MY living room?”
”Spending the time searching for a bunch of stuff is tiring.”
I spent the second day seeking inspiration through lightning demos, brainstormed solutions via Crazy 8s, and sketched out possible solutions.
To generate a broad spectrum of useful design interactions and UX patterns, I began looking at competitor websites like IKEA, Crate&Barrel, and Modsy. Non-competitor websites I looked at were Aritzia (clothing & apparel), Expedia, and Ipsy (makeup subscription).
The “Browse Starter Kit Combos” screen would be the most critical screen because this is the page where users would first be introduced to the curated items.
Equipped with some design inspiration from the previous day, I began sketching out 8 variations of my critical screen in a span of 8 minutes.
This solution allows users to view and interact with the suggested products in their own space. With the freedom to move items around, this takes away the guesswork and uncertainty.
Using the critical screen as a focal point, I began to sketch out 3 screens to emulate how the user would work through this important flow.
This page shows one prominent result of the style quiz along with several other possible matches. This allows the user to feel in control of their journey in case they want to explore other options.
The critical screen. This page will house an uploaded image of the user’s space along with draggable items from within the suggested starter pack.
Users also have the option to toggle between different starter pack styles if desired.
There would be established filters determined by the style quiz and should the user decide to update these filters, the packages will change accordingly.
After the user clicks the “Add to cart” CTA, this confirmation screen will appear. This adheres to what users are already familiar with when shopping online.
Sketching out the end-to-end user experience helped me bring my ideas to life and it also allowed me to truly grasp the scope of the entire project.
From here I was able to determine the hierarchy of screens in which the user would move through in order to accomplish their goal.
With only a day to make a prototype for the next day's usability tests, I created a prototype that only consisted of the necessary interactions.
I began to build out only the necessary screens and interactions based on my storyboard sketches for the upcoming usability tests.
The usability tests would shed light on how users felt about the process of locating a starter kit, and whether the journey made sense.
I recruited 5 participants and conducted 3 moderated usability test sessions through Zoom and 2 in person.
3 females and 2 male, all between the ages of 28-36. All participants had moved into a house or apartment within the recent 2 years and experienced the stressful task of decorating.
4 users stated that one page in the questionnaire was overwhelming and too loud compared to the others which led to feelings of frustration. This would lead me to redesign this particular page to reduce information and cognitive overload.
The question of whether the design assistant cost money was brought up by several users. One user went straight to “Curated Sets” because he didn’t want to spend money on a designer. This led me to revisit the content.
Users questioned the accuracy of the item size in proportion to their uploaded image. One user stated that without the dimensions and ability to resize the item, she could not make a well-informed decision on whether it would fit in her space. This led me to include a resizing tool while also displaying the item dimensions.
This 5 day sprint was very different from the 5 month project I had been working on prior to this, in that it definitely made me push my boundaries in many ways. The sprint itself helped me put the design process into an Agile perspective and forced me to ideate faster in order to produce fast results. This proved to be the most challenging part of the sprint.
There were times when I was tempted to alter my designs; however, I learned the importance of sticking with what I had chosen and following through until the end. By staying on track, this allowed me to focus on the critical aspects of this feature and to not get lost in the abundance of ideas that would come to me throughout the day.
Given the scope and timeline of this project, it was not feasible to create animations and micro-interactions so the prototype still feels a bit two dimensional. Incorporating some subtle animations and micro-interactions can help create personality and dimension in the overall user experience.
I spent longer than expected when creating the interactive prototype. I decided to go with Figma because it’s the tool I feel most comfortable with. However, I found myself trying to perfect a pixel perfect design rather than creating a ‘realistic façade’. I look forward to exploring other possible prototyping tools that will help me work more efficiently.
