Website Redesign UX Case Study Part I: Research & Design
#UI #UX
Project Timeline
Sep 2021 - Apr 2022
My role
UI/UX
Tools
Pencils & Papers, Google Docs, Google forms, Google Meet, Miro, Kardsort, Figma, Maze
Deliverables
Empathy map, persona, user journey, user flow, task flow, wireframes, design system, prototype, case study
https://www.damanwoo.com/node/93085
I believe most people that have ever been to IKEA like the atmosphere. However, does IKEA Taiwan’s virtual store give the same vibes and experiences as real stores? “Due to Covid-19, I better stay away from the crowd. Let me shop for IKEA products online.” Before Taiwan’s pandemic outbreak in May 2021, I went to IKEA to shop for a dining table but I didn’t buy it on the spot. When Taiwan reached the level 3 epidemic alert, I tried to buy the table online. But the whole process didn’t go well. I was inspired by this experience to redesign IKEA Taiwan’s website.
After deciding to redesign IKEA Taiwan’s website, I dug into IKEA’s websites for other countries; and discovered that countries like the US, Japan, Singapore…etc have a cleaner and more consistent template. Many of the usability issues on IKEA Taiwan’s website are no longer found on the websites in other countries. At first, I thought it was because IKEA Taiwan hasn’t been updated to the newer global template, but later I discovered that IKEA Taiwan and IKEA Hong Kong are under Dairy Farm Group, a Hong Kong retail company, and they do not necessarily need to follow the global template. However, when redesigning IKEA Taiwan’s website I kept the global template in mind since it is more usable; and at the same time, I also considered Taiwan consumers’ shopping behaviours to tailor the global template to Taiwanese consumers’ needs.
The experience of shopping at IKEA Taiwan’s website doesn’t match the experience of shopping at real stores.
When planning for user research, because IKEA is a Global organization I wanted to understand its vision and goals, so I performed secondary research to understand its background. SWOT analysis was used to identify strengths, weaknesses, and future opportunities of IKEA Taiwan's website, and competitor analysis was used to pin down competitors’ websites’ good features and how they solve problems. Also, I searched for IKEA’s target audiences and used it as the standard for recruiting interviewees. Lastly, I dived into IKEA Taiwan and other countries' websites for some obvious usability issues.
After secondary research was done, I went into conducting primary research. Some qualitative methods I adopted were surveys and interviews, and the quantitative method I adopted was card sorting.
Below is the SWOT analysis to evaluate IKEA Taiwan's competitive position.
IKEA Taiwan’s competitors include Nitori, Hola, TRPlus, Working House, MUJI...etc. Compared to its competitors IKEA is considered cheap but with great and simple design, the target audience should be someone who is cost-conscious but values design; and doesn’t mind DIY furniture. The brand positioning of IKEA Taiwan should also affect the UI of its website, which is great and simple.
After finishing analysing IKEA Taiwan’s competitors, I put together the Competitor Metrics. All of the competitors here use a nav bar instead of a hamburger menu. Also, they all include the shipping cost on their specific product page.
Other than IKEA Taiwan’s competitors, I have also researched some other e-commerce sites like Sephora, Etsy, John Lewis, H&M, Pinkoi, Shopee…etc for potential features that IKEA can adopt. For example, from the screenshots we can see that Sephora and John Lewis both adopt the mega menu for their nav bar, and according to NNG, mega menus “are an excellent design choice for accommodating a large number of options or for revealing lower-level site pages at a glance (Nielsen & Li, 2017).”
Some of the current usability issues I discovered and analysed are described below based on the three usability quality components: learnability, efficiency and satisfaction. Click here to see the final prototype that solved these issues.
Goal: gather basic demographic information and answers for close-ended questions to decrease the time that would cost for an interview. After usability tests for IKEA Taiwan and IKEA US' websites, there were also surveys for satisfaction rates.
Goal: find out how IKEA customers shop online, what they feel works well, where they think there are issues, and how they think things could be improved.
Some techniques used:
For the qualitative data from surveys and interviews, I used thematic analysis (affinity map) and rainbow spreadsheets to analyse data and identify common themes.
We can see from the results that the satisfaction rate for IKEA US is higher than for IKEA Taiwan. Furthermore, the rate for the statement: "I agree that the IKEA US website is easier to use than the IKEA Taiwan site" is 7.8. Therefore, it is correct that the global template needs to be considered when redesigning IKEA Taiwan’s website.
From the usability test for IKEA Taiwan’s website, a few interviewees were lost when trying to look for the 74x74cm black-brown Lerhamn table, which was the same problem I also had. Therefore, I decided to perform card sorting to reorganise the IA for product categories.
Moreover, most of the interviewees claimed that they prefer to shop for large/expensive items like furniture on laptop/desktop, therefore, the redesign will start with a laptop/desktop breakpoint.
Going back to the hypotheses, we can see from the surveys and interviews that out of the five interviewees, only one has ever shopped on IKEA Taiwan’s website, and she lives in the rural areas of Taiwan where there is no IKEA.
The reasons why others didn’t shop online:
Therefore, the hypothesis "if IKEA provides seamless experiences the increased online users from the pandemic will stay" is tested true. Also, according to the interviews, people who live in cities that don’t have IKEA shop more on IKEA Taiwan’s website.
Lastly, four out of five interviewees would like to see more sales information on IKEA US' website.
Goal: to generate better IA (information architecture) for product categories
Points to note:
The above information were taken on September 1, 2021
For card sorting results, I used card sorting analysis to see which cards are easily miscategorized. The percentages in white or yellow were the ones that were more easily miscategorized.
New cards the testers created were:
Only 20% of the people categorized "shopping bag/trolley" to its correct category "leisure/travel."
I have reworked the whole section of product categories, but here I only show detailed IA for "tables/sofas/chairs" and "kitchen" to demonstrate the difference. I am still using four layers to categorise products (products > tables/sofas/chairs > tables > dining tables) despite that IKEA US uses three layers, because I am going to change the hamburger menu to mega menus. Changes are listed below.
From the research and analysis, three pain points are identified.
Three personas are created based on research and aggregated empathy maps, with Alice Lee being the primary persona, Kevin Chen and Belinda Wu being the secondary personas.
Meet Alice, a 27 years old pharmacist with mediocre income who is cost-conscious and loves taking advantage of sales.
Meet Kevin, a 30 years old engineer who is cautious when making purchase decisions.
Meet Belinda, a 25 years old automotive designer who visits furniture websites not only for shopping but also to collect inspiration.
I picked Alice as my primary persona because according to Santander, Taiwanese are loyal to brands, but they are also sensitive to price. Alice is more suitable for IKEA Taiwan's target audience.
From the research and thematic analysis, I have put together three aggregated empathy maps for persona building. Here I only showed one for the primary persona, Alice Lee.
Scenario: Alice has too many things on her desk so she needs a new table for dining. The dining table she is looking for should have the following characteristics: cheap, stylish, good value for money, and fits in her studio. Since she lives in Yilan, a suburb area that has fewer choices for furniture, she decides to shop online.
Goals: To save time and effort to go to the actual store to shop.
Alice, a pharmacist who seeks efficiency when shopping, needs to quickly get the sales information and finish the shopping process in order to gain satisfaction and save some hassle.
“How might we” and “user stories” were the tools I used for ideating redesign ideas after the point of view statement was defined.
Below are the sitemaps, before and after. Some changes are based on IKEA US' website, some changes are based on the interviews.
Below are the visuals for the nav bar and footer, current and redesigned versions (with reference to IKEA US' website as well).
Following is the task flow for looking for sales, finding a Lerhamn table, checkout, and tracking order.
Following is the user flow of Alice, our primary persona.
I drew some preliminary ideas before going into the final wireframes.
The prototype is developed in Figma after the mockups and wireframes were drawn.
Below are some screenshots of the current and redesigned IKEA Taiwan's website, referring back to the current usability issues listed above.
Below are screenshots of the highlight features added to the redesign website.
With the design system, since IKEA US is already doing a good job, I have got the bits and pieces mainly from the website and other sources like annual reports…etc. Here is also an interesting video about IKEA’s design system, Skapa.
