NATAKA
Design of E-commerce Clothing Brand
Project Type: Freelance
Role: UX Designer, UI Designer, UX Researcher
Overview
Nataka was established in 1994 with a mission to supply everyone with budget-friendly clothing that provides a wide range of styles. With a prominent presence with over 400 stores around the world in 32 countries. Nataka is now ready to move beyond its brick-and-mortar stores and adjust to the competitive market.
The Problem
While their brick-and-mortars are proven successful, Nataka struggles to deliver consumer expectations merely through in-store experiences. Among the list, consumer frustrations include sizing problems, product availability, and time-consuming in-person returns. With online shopping being a strong driving force of sales, it is crucial for Nataka to extend its products online to better shape customer’s experiences.
The Goal
To help meet consumer needs, the presented solution to Nataka’s problem is to build an e-commerce website that would enhance customer’s experience through ease and convenience. This proposed solution would serve as an opportunity to expand the brand and identify necessary brand adjustments in relation to the users.
The Design Process
Research
Competitive Analysis
To gain further understanding of the current market, I sought to identify the strengths and weaknesses of competing brands. The data collected is reflected in the establishment of features and design decisions going forward.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Successful brands in the market have shown upkeep of competitive pricing.
Keeping current with trends is important in developing brand image and recognition.
Brands that are unable to meet customers’ product expectations are seen to have decreased sales.
User Interviews
After analyzing the various competitors, it was time to gather insights from potential users of Nataka’s future website. Before diving further into the process, first I must determine the user’s motivation, frustrations, and pain points. Through a series of interviews, I was able to narrow down and analyze users’ insight of their shopping experiences.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Personalized content provides greater engagement and sales output from consumers.
Satisfaction of customers is based on metrics such as item quality, sizing, and customer service.
Sales portray items at a better value and incentivize customers to shop.
A great return policy helps customers gain confidence in their purchases.
Define
Persona
To instill the essence of users to he brand, I’ve created a persona based off the data collected from previous researches (Competitive Analysis & User Interviews). This will serve as a reminder to ongoing design decisions, keeping focus on the user needs/goals.
Card Sorting
To further align users’ expectations with Nataka’s, I conducted a hybrid card sorting activity. Interviewees are given 7 categories to sort 30 apparel items, with the choice to add additional categories if the provided ones did not feel a sense of belonging. This activity helped me understand the classifications of categories from the user’s perspective going forward.
Site Map
With the product categories defined with the help of the users, I began to construct the site map to create the foundation of the website’s navigation.
Task & User Flow
Understanding the mental model of the user is crucial to the design outcome of Nataka. I expanded on the site map to provide a task and user flow that will help me orient the user’s navigation options and their priority task (purchase of a product).
Ideate
Low-Fi Wireframes
As I proceeded to the ideation phase of the project I began to transfer the data that was collected into actionable. With my previous research in mind, I made several sketches of the Nataka which is then realized through the series of wireframes.
Mood Board
The all the information gathered, I created a mood board that would convey the characteristics I find prominent in Nataka as a leading clothing brand.
UI KIT
To help condense many of the design decisions made from previous deliverables I created a UI kit to communicate the direction of the brand. With the UI kit, application and design decisions for the wireframes are more solidified as I progress.
Prototyping
High Fidelity Wireframe
High Fidelity Prototype
With previous deliverables completed, I look to build out the main pages required for the user’s priority task (purchase an item). The prototype provides all necessary interactions required from homepage to completion of checkout, similar to the modeled task flow.
Testing
Usability Testing
To ensure that the website is functional, easy to use, and checks off on usability heuristics, I moved forward with testing the high-fidelity prototype. Among many objectives, participants during testing will be able to navigate the main task flow from entering the site to completing a purchase of an item. This will help me gain insight into the user’s mental model and establish necessary next steps to improve the user’s experiences with Nataka.
MAIN OBJECTIVE:
Explore the content of Nataka’s Homepage.
Test the ease of personalization through creating an account.
Test the flow of the navigation process by searching for a product.
Test the difficulty of the item selection process from filtering to the product page.
Observe and analyze the user’s experience during the checkout process to identify pain points.
Affinity Mapping
To better analyze the findings collected during the usability testing, I created an affinity map to help establish key patterns. Patterns that were found helped determine necessary iterations to Nataka that would alleviate pain points brought up during the tests.
Next Steps
Continue designing other features
With the main task of the prototype to be navigating the flow of purchasing an item, it’s important to build out adjacent features that are essential to the site.
Additional Testing and implementation
Although valuable feedback was gained through the first usability test, there is much to iterate upon. As new features are built additional testing is required to ensure user pain points are being addressed.