Pocket Mart

Design sprint x Shopify

During my UX design diploma program at Brainstation, I participated in the 5-day design sprint with the Shopify product team. I was paired up with three talented product designers to improve e-commerce users' online shopping experience. In the following paragraphs, I will present our design solution - Pocket Mart, and explain how it will use AR technology to improve the users' shopping experience.

Timeline: 5 days
Tools used: Figma
Role: Product designer
Team: Leona Huang, Sara, Sofia, Rammy

Design challenge
The primary problem space

How might we bring brick-and-mortar sensory experiences online so that consumers can get enriched shopping experiences like they may get in-store?
 

Secondary research

To learn more about the problem space and the consumers who enjoy shopping online, we conducted secondary research and user interviews. Statistics suggested that ...

According to research gate:

Consumers are more likely to believe recommendations from people they know and trust, “ FRIENDS & FAMILY”.

User interview

So, how do consumers think about their shopping experience with friends and family? To understand the shopping experience of our potential customers, we conducted a user interview.

Here are some quotes from our interviewees.

“ I love shopping with friends and family, I get a sense of security and have a lot of fun when we go shopping.”

“ I want a second opinion when I am buying new lipstick colour or eye shadow.”

Persona

We created a brief user persona to learn about our users' pain points based on our research.

Refined problem space

HMW provide a social aspect for consumers to enhance their shopping experience?

Ideation & Concept development

Think about current technology. How we will solve the problem…

- How could emerge technology supplement experiences that typically require people to be in the same physical space?

- Shopify has recently rolled out new features like 3D imaging and AR/VR. Can we apply them to users’ shopping experience?

( Eg, the image on the right side shows the AR furniture presentation from the IKEA app.)

Inspiration board

After we decided to provide a social aspect for consumers to improve their shopping experience, we started to look at products related to e-commerce, social media, and shopping inspirations. There are three great examples that inspired our creativity.

Depop - good example of online shopping + exploration.

Instagram - combining social media with the shopping experience.

Instant pot - a good example of using AR technology to help customers make their shopping decisions.

Initial sketches

We illustrated three important pages of our product:

1, choose product colour.

2, interact with another person.

3, try another product.

Solutions

Two unique features make the product stand out.

1, view the product in the AR camera.

This feature will boost the users’ efficiency of making purchasing decisions on small products like home decorations. Because the AR camera helps users foresee if the product’s size, appearance fits the user’s home.

 
2, video chat with other users during shopping.

Online shopping is lonely, and we ask for shopping advice from our friends by sending them the links or pictures of the products we choose. The video chat feature makes it easier for users to communicate their shopping ideas. Besides, this feature brings more social interactions for people staying at home during COVID19 lockdown.

User testing and feedback

After developing the creative ideas and bringing them into wireframes, we decided to see users’ feedback and improve the product.

Test scenario

Interview tasks

Heather is shopping online alone. She has a hard time making her purchasing decisions. She invites her friend Julie online to view the products and give suggestions.

1. Add product to the shopping cart.

2, Start a Virtual Tour.

3, Invite Friends to view products.

4, Explore options through AR.

User test feedback and changes.

Wording

Change: Change the “Virtual Tour” to “View in my space”.

The “Virtual Tour” is confusing to most of the users, and this term is not a “call to action” term.

 Improve the presentation of the shopping cart.

Change: Adding “delete” and “save” options to the cart.

The original shopping cart doesn’t have options for users to save the product they like. 

Future considerations

The key performance indicators are listed as following:

- Successful purchase
- Average session time
- % of AR video chats
- % of repeat customers

There are Opportunities

- There is an increasing number of smart devices that integrate with AR technology. AR technology will become an important part of people’s daily life.

We saw challenges for the Pocket market.

Feasibility of Technology
Since AR is a growing technology, it takes a long time for this technology to mature and become adaptive to most of the products and business models. 

Market adoption of the product
Based on our research, current AR technologies are adaptive to products with fixed patterns and sizes ( for example, furniture ). It is hard to present products like clothing using AR technology.

Next steps

There are some important features that could be added to this product.

Develop an AR fitting room.
Increase video call capacity to 3+members.
Explore more features for interacting with the community.
View multiple products at the same time.