Website Redesign UX Case Study: Summary
#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 who have ever been to IKEA enjoy the atmosphere. However, does IKEA Taiwan’s virtual store provide the same vibes and experiences as its physical stores? “Due to Covid-19, I’d better stay away from crowds. Let me shop for IKEA products online.” Before Taiwan’s pandemic outbreak in May 2021, I visited IKEA to shop for a dining table but didn’t purchase it on the spot. When Taiwan reached the Level 3 epidemic alert, I tried to buy the table online. However, the whole process didn’t go smoothly. This experience inspired me to redesign IKEA Taiwan’s website.
The experience of shopping on IKEA Taiwan’s website doesn’t match the experience of shopping in its physical stores.
When planning user research, I conducted secondary research to understand IKEA's background, competitors and current usability issues. After completing the secondary research, interviews were carried out with five interviewees, aged between 21 and 30, who are primarily white-collar workers.
The reasons why the others didn’t shop online were as follows:
I explored IKEA’s websites for other countries and discovered that countries like the US, Japan and Singapore have cleaner and more consistent templates. Many of the usability issues on IKEA Taiwan’s website are no longer present on the websites in other countries. Initially, I thought this was because IKEA Taiwan hadn’t been updated to the newer global template. However, I later discovered that IKEA Taiwan and IKEA Hong Kong are managed by Dairy Farm Group, a Hong Kong retail company, and are not necessarily required to follow the global template.When redesigning IKEA Taiwan’s website, I kept the global template in mind since it is more user-friendly. At the same time, I also considered Taiwanese consumers’ shopping behaviours to adapt the global template to better suit their needs.
Some of the current usability issues I discovered and analysed are described below based on the three usability quality components: learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction.
From the research and analysis, three pain points were identified.
Three personas were created based on research and aggregated empathy maps, with Alice Lee as the primary persona and Kevin Chen and Belinda Wu as the secondary personas.
Meet Alice, a 27-year-old pharmacist with a moderate income who is cost-conscious and enjoys taking advantage of sales.
Meet Kevin, a 30-year-old engineer who is cautious when making purchase decisions.
Meet Belinda, a 25-year-old automotive designer who visits furniture websites not only for shopping but also to gather inspiration.
I picked Alice as my primary persona because, according to Santander, Taiwanese consumers are loyal to brands but also sensitive to price. Alice aligns more closely with IKEA Taiwan's target audience.
Alice, a pharmacist who seeks efficiency when shopping, needs to quickly access sales information and complete the shopping process to gain satisfaction and save time.
"How might we" and "user stories" were the tools I used for ideating redesign ideas after the point of view statement was defined.
Focusing on the "finish the shopping process quickly" aspect of the POV statement, two HMW statements were developed: "how might we make the users' shopping process smoother" and "how might we make the products easier to find." My solutions involve reorganizing the website's information architecture (IA) and product categories information architecture (IA).
I have reworked the entire section of product categories, but here I will only show the detailed IA for "tables/sofas/chairs" and "kitchen" to demonstrate the difference.
Following is the task flow for looking for sales, finding a Lerhamn table, checking out and tracking the order.
Following is the user flow of Alice, our primary persona.
The prototype was developed in Figma after the mockups and wireframes were created.
With the design system, since IKEA US is already doing a good job, I gathered key elements mainly from the website and other sources like annual reports, etc. Here is also an interesting video about IKEA's design system, Skapa.
I chose to conduct remote unmoderated usability tests using Maze because it is more cost- and time-efficient. Maze allows for screen recording and captures testers' expressions simultaneously.
Methods used: remote unmoderated
Participants: 1+5
Tool: Maze
Iterations: 2
Scenario:
Methods used: remote unmoderated
Participants: 1+5
Tool: Maze
Iterations: 2
Scenario:
Based on the comments from the tests, some changes were made according to the Severity Ratings for Usability Problems. For example, instead of using a drop-down list to select the year and month for the delivery date, left and right arrows were added.
Before choosing whether users need assembly or not, the delivery date is greyed out (cannot be selected). This improvement reduced the misclick rate in the next iteration.
Between this and the last iteration, A/B testing was performed for the shopping cart page. Instead of selecting which products to check out, four testers preferred to delete the products they didn’t want. When they clicked delete, a confirmation popup appeared.
According to a comment from a tester, numbering the sections makes the process smoother.
Below are some screenshots of the current and redesigned IKEA Taiwan website.
Below are screenshots of the highlighted features added to the redesigned website.
Comparing the satisfaction rates from the second iteration with those gathered from the survey for the original IKEA US site and IKEA Taiwan site, we can see that both have improved.
Due to my background in Bachelor of Business, I sometimes focus more on what the business wants than what users want. Therefore, I didn’t conduct quantitative surveys or screen interviewees for this project. The interviewees I selected were based on secondary research and my hypothesis, and I realised that they were not dynamic enough. I learned that even though conducting primary research takes time, empathising with the users is the most important step when designing services for users. Also, setting clear hypotheses and goals before starting primary research will give a clear direction and save a lot of extra work.
I have also learned that throughout the design process, I should always keep my primary persona, Alice Lee, in mind. What does Alice want? What will she do? This way, I can truly design a product that empathises with the users.
With the usability tests for my prototype, when a scenario is given, it will be closer to the real-world situation than just giving instructions. Also, I changed the wording of the instructions for the second iteration based on the testers' feedback. This should not have been done in order to avoid letting other factors affect the test results.
With my proposed solution, I have added the "delivered within 24 hours" feature to be competitive with existing competitors, but now I feel that this is more of a strategic aspect of the business and would require more insights and research.
Lastly, since this is my first UI/UX project, I tried to use as many tools as possible. However, looking back, some of them might not have been necessary.
I separated this project into five phases, as listed below, at the beginning. Due to human resource constraints, I was only able to work on the minimum viable product (phase 1 and part of phase 2).
The next steps would be to work on elastic demand, address the different breakpoints, and develop an app for IKEA Taiwan.
Some elastic demands include adding features like inspiration collection functions (similar to Pinterest) and cooperating with credit card companies to offer users rebates.
