Funky Society is a project of community-based e-commerce, focused on streetwear. I was contracted as the sole designer in the team with the objective of delivering a complete website project and conducting workshops with stakeholders for the purpose of establishing clear direction and objectives.
UX research, UX design, UI design, Workshop facilitation
E-commerce
6 Weeks
My involvement with the project began at the kickoff meeting with the stakeholders. The aim of this meeting was to define the project's nature, set goals, and establish a basic timeline.
To understand the expectations of the stakeholders I have organized a workshop to establish a basic understanding of a problem that we set out to solve and speculate about potential users and directions.
As a starting point for the workshop, we set out to define the problem by conducting a free discussion. Each stakeholder was able to present their vision and clash it with others. I have provided my opinions based on my experience and industry standards.
Each participant was asked to provide their assumptions about the users in the form of simple sticky notes. Drawing on this input it was possible to create a basic understanding of the target audience.
Based on the insights obtained from the brainstorming sessions, it was decided that a sense of community could foster a more immersive and connected user experience and therefore the solution should provide functionalities that enable it.
To verify the assumptions about potential users I decided to research the community based on the online presence of its members. Based on the research I was able to create 2 distinct personas of potential users.
To act based on information I set out to learn more about the community features and their impact on e-commerce as their inclusion was one of the basic assumptions. To get data I have conducted primary and secondary research.
Since one of the basic hypotheses was that the inclusion of community features would be attractive to users I decided to conduct an online survey to determine which features (if any) would be seen as beneficial by the users.
To quickly and cheaply verify initial assumptions I have also conducted basic secondary research and gathered some of the already existing data:
-"Building Brand Community in the Digital Age: Towards a Conceptual Framework" by Albert Muniz Jr. and Thomas C. O'Guinn.
- "The Value of Social Commerce Activities: Utilizing Social Network Sites for Purchase" by Saeed R. Rizwan, Alain Yee-Loong Chong, and Heong Wah Wong.
- "Virtual Community Engagement and E-Commerce Sales: The Mediating Role of Purchase Intention" by Eva Martínez-Caro and José Luis Cabezuelo Lorenzo.
While original ideas are important it is not beneficial to get out of touch or reinvent well-known solutions. By looking at similar products I was able to identify solutions that could be adjusted for the purpose of this project while avoiding the problematic ones. Additionally, a competitive audit helps with identifying the universal industry conventions that users are familiar with.
The goal of the second workshop was to present the research insights to the stakeholders in order to decide on the most viable solution.
As a starting point for the workshop, I have presented primary and secondary research, the personas, and a competitive audit done to verify the assumptions from the previous workshop.
Based on the research I presented my recommendation to continue with community features. As for the selection of the features I suggested including solutions that are easier to implement, but also scored highly in the research.
As a final part of the workshop, I conducted a discussion with the stakeholders. My goal was to arrive at a well-defined direction for the project.
The idea-generation process is usually difficult to express. For this project in the beginning I set out to create as many ideas as possible and give them distinct titles. Next, I tried to deconstruct each of them into basic components that may be switched between solutions. Using that technique I took the most promising components to create two main ideas that were in direct opposition to each other. These two ideas were then presented to stakeholders along with a description of their strengths and weaknesses to settle on a final decision.
Mapping out the flows helps me to focus on the user and their activity. At this stage, my goal is to optimize the flow to ensure an intuitive and seamless user experience. Later in the process, I like to use previously created user flow to quickly asses what screens, elements, and popups will be required for the prototype.
To better visualize how individual web pages or site sections are related to each other I decided to create a sitemap.
At this step I try to transfer the best ideas from paper to digital but also go into more detail, exploring solutions for individual screens or page elements.
At this step, I try to start connecting the site's information architecture to its visual design. Figma prototype is a great way to get the overall feeling of the solution but also gives the chance to identify potentially problematic flows or dead ends.
Once I was able to create a complete prototype with all known user flows, my next goal was to create a UI with a unified style. At the same time, I compile all the elements to create a design system and reuse the same components for the rest of the project.
This part consists of a multitude of small tasks and details that need to be in order before the handoff. At this stage, all the placeholders are replaced, and the prototype is updated to get as close to a life version as possible.
After the project was complete it was handed down to the development team - using Figma developer mode and Trello I provided comments and instructions to help the developers and provide alternatives if some technical constraints arose.
This case study presents a simplified and organized (or at least that was my hope) version of my design process for the Funky Society e-commerce project. This simplification was done to convey information in a digestible and convenient form. In reality, this project was much less straightforward - just like any design process. It included many variables, waiting for decisions, changes in vision based on the difficulty of implementation, and a lot of going back to previous assumptions. Amidst all this, going back to previous design stages would have been much easier had I led my documentation in a more thorough way, not focusing only on deliverables but also on the process itself. Additionally, insufficient user testing was planned from the beginning. If done again I would advocate for more tests to be predicted in the planning phase.
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