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
Highlight
IKEA Taiwan website redesign utilises the design-thinking framework. After research and iterations, the satisfaction rate rises by 20%. To see the detailed process of IKEA Taiwan Website Redesign, click HERE for part I (Empathise, Define, Ideate and Prototype), and click HERE for part II (Test, What I've Learned and Future Consideration).
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.
The experience of shopping at IKEA Taiwan’s website doesn’t match the experience of shopping at real stores.
When planning for user research, I performed secondary research to understand IKEA's background, competitors and current usability issues. After secondary research was done, interviews were conducted with five interviewees aged between 21-30 who are mainly white-collar workers.
The reasons why others didn’t shop online:
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.
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 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.
Alice, a pharmacist who seeks efficiency when shopping, needs to quickly get the sales/cost 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 of Alice was defined.
Focusing on the "finish the shopping process quickly" part of the POV statement, two HMW statements "how might we make the users' shopping process smoother" and "how might we make the products easier to find" were developed and my solutions are to reorganize the website's information architecture and product categories information architecture.
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.
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.
The prototype is developed in Figma after the mockups and wireframes were drawn.
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.
I chose to do remote unmoderated usability tests with Maze; because it is more cost and time-efficient. With Maze, it can record testers’ screens and their expressions at the same time.
Methods used: remote unmoderated
Participants: 1+5
Tool: Maze
Iterations: 2
Scenario:
Methods used: remote unmoderated
Participants: 1+5
Tool: Maze
Iterations: 2
Scenario:
According to the comments from the tests, some changes were made based on the Severity Ratings for Usability Problems. For example, instead of a drop-down list to select the year and month for the delivery date, the left and right arrows were added.
And before choosing if the users need assembly or not, the delivery date is greyed (cannot be selected). This improved 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 prefer to delete the products they don't want. When they click delete, a confirmation popup will appear.
And according to the comment from a tester, numbering the sections makes the process smoother.
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.
Comparing the satisfaction rates from the second iteration with the satisfaction rates for the original IKEA US site and IKEA Taiwan site that were gathered from the survey, we can see that both improved.
Due to my background in Bachelor of Business, I sometimes focus more on what business wants than what users want. Therefore, I didn’t conduct quantitative surveys and screen interviewees for this project. The interviewees I selected are based on secondary research and my hypothesis, and I realised that they are not dynamic enough. I learned that even though doing primary research takes time, empathising with the users is the most important step when designing services for users. Also, setting out 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, I should always keep my primary persona, Alice Lee, in mind. What does Alice want? What will she do? This way I can really design a product that empathises with the users.
With the usability tests for my prototype, when a scenario is given, it will be more close to the real-world situation than just giving instructions. Also, I changed the wording on the instructions for the second iteration based on the testers' feedback, this should not have been done in order not to let other factors affect the test results.
With my proposed solution, I have added the "delivered within 24 hours" feature to be competitive with the existing competitors, but now I feel that this is a more strategic part of the business and would need more insights and research.
Lastly, since this is my first UI/UX project, I tried to use as many tools as possible. But looking back, some of them might not be necessary.
I have separated this project into five phases, as listed below, in the beginning, and due to human resources constraints, I was only able to work on the minimum viable product (phase 1 and a bit of phase 2).
The next steps would be to work on the elastic demand, and the different breakpoints, and to develop an app for IKEA Taiwan.
Some elastic demands include adding features like inspiration collection functions (similar to Pinterest) and to cooperate with credit card companies for users to get rebates.
