Design Sprint- H2H

House2Home is a start up that seeks to provide individuals the option to decorate their new homes on a budget. Their e-commerce website sells home decor items and accessories.

Survey conducted by House2Home shows majority of customers just moved into a new apartment or home. Findings suggests that customers struggle to select and decide on decor items for their home. The struggle points to customers’ feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and unsure whether the items compliment each other.

This project utilises GV’s 5 day sprint method. The sprint is a five-day process with the goal of answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It is a method involving business strategy, innovation, behaviour science, design thinking and more. This accelerated process helps teams make better informed decisions on what to focus on developing further.

Solo Designer - research synthesis, design, prototype, testing

“Want to make my home stylish, but hard to stick to a budget”

“I know what the ‘look’ I want, but I don’t know what products to buy to pull it off”

“I find things I like but never know if they look good together, I get overwhelmed and end up not buying anything”

“I don’t have a huge budget, so I want the items I buy to make the most impact in giving the apartment the look I want”

Meet the Persona

Ally, 23 y/o Chicago, IL

Behavior

Graduated from college 1 month ago, and has since moved into her first rented apartment - a small studio in Chicago
Browses Pinterest for inspiration - save images of rooms she likes - mostly small spaces that felt bright and lively
Sets aside time to shop for decorations for her apartment, but gets overwhelmed quickly and decides to ‘shop another time’

Pain points

Knows the ‘look’ she wants, but doesn’t know the right things to buy to achieve it
Want to achieve the ‘look’ she wants on a budget
Wants to buy decor that has an impact on the apartment, but not big changes, such as renovation
Sees many small items, but hesitates to buy because she does not know if they will look good together.

Goals

Wants to give her apartment enhancements without needing to shop for individual items
Find decorative items within her budget that will achieve the look she wants

Crazy 8 sketches

A fast brainstorming method used in design sprints to generate many ideas quickly. The goal is to sketch 8 concept ideas or variations within 8 minutes, without judging them. Quantity over quality.

My crazy 8 sketches focuses on the user experience for viewing the suggested starter kits, as I believe it is the most crucial step in solving my HMWs. I decided on the third screen from the bottom left, as it provides a clear and concise layout for users to view the website generated suggested kits in tab view on top. The tab view provides an easy glance on the all the suggested styles, allowing users to feel at ease. The user has the freedom to add the entire starter kit to the cart, or select individual items.

Day 3

Create a Storyboard

My storyboard begins with taking a quiz on the homepage of House2Home. Why quiz? Because it is simple and direct. I decided that a quiz can help users narrow down their preferences based on budget and style. The quiz only asks for budget and style because I wanted to stick to the basics and not overwhelm customers. After the quiz, the user is able to view carefully curated sets, each set is presented as tab form, to enable user an overview of the suggested sets. Overall, this solution makes choosing home decor a smooth and efficient experience, provides personalised selections for the user to decide on the right decorations and is mindful of a budget constraint.

Due to time constraints, I abandoned the idea for AR viewing, but if I were to add features, this feature would better enable the user to view the items in real time in their own space.

This day was by far the most challenging phase. In a team environment, each member is responsible for an aspect of stitching the product together. However, prototyping as a solo designer proves to be a great learning experience, as it requires holistic thinking and the ability to efficiently craft creative solutions. Given the time constraint, the sprint allowed me to focus on solving the core problem instead of wondering about additional features that may or may not contribute to solving the existing problem.

Personalised Recommendation

Providing users with the option to take a quiz reliefs users of decision paralysis.

Gauge User Preference

I've create a survey to quiz user preference. This decision also directly addresses the pain point of 'indecisiveness' in user. The survey asks customers for their budget and style in order for the company to suggest the most suitable products.

Generate Options for Users

Once a user completes the survey, a few options are generated (see the top section). These auto generated bundles provides a user with pre-styled set of home decor, allowing the shopping experience to be frictionless. The idea here is to provide options for user to then add to basket without having to spend time mix and match products themselves.

Day 5
‍
Testing

The 5 users I’ve interviewed were not new homeowners, however, they’ve all wanted to decorate or have decorated their homes at some points in their lives. The main takeaway was that there is an impression that the suggested bundle is disjointed from the ‘we think you’ll like’ phrase, which can be easily resolved by adjusting the spacing between elements on screen. Some users were confused by the word ‘bundle’ at the add to cart area, which can be easily amended to ‘starter kit’ for better wording. Overall, the experience was positive, the users were able to complete the task. In particular, they described it as ‘easy to use’, ‘modern’ and ‘smooth’.

View Prototype