THE NEW WAY TO DESIGN YOUR HOME
Identify and fix the pain points felt by Interior Designers & Home Professionals.
To clear confusion around organizing their ideas and inventory, and also around making solid plans for their clients based on their budgetary needs.
OVERVIEW
Remodeling and design ideas.
Houzz is known for its well-curated and categorized list of living spaces designs. It's a platform that is used by consumers and interior designers to get ideas and by home professionals who use the platform as a way to promote their work.
Tools & Methods
Concept Design, User Research, Surveys, Competitive/Comparative Analysis, Empathy Map, Users Personas, Wireframes, Prototyping, Usability Walkthrough.
Tools - Sketch, Invision, Paper + Pen, GoogleForms.
OBJECTIVE
SOLUTION
Addressing the confusion and clutter.
During my research, I learned that users were frustrated with information clutter, missing information, unclear service cost and search not being too accurate.
My hypothesis is to make search better as to provide more criteria such as budget, cost etc, create a comprehensive vendor profile. I would also like to organize the content around tagged items and item detail page for a recommendation so that the information can be consumed more easily.
Role
A solo project as a part of General Assembly part time course
Duration 4 months.
PROCESS
Understanding Users
According to the survey responses and the Interview, I found out that people like to browse new designs either for inspiration for their house, for their clients or for the innovative ideas. Below is the list of all the issues that surfaced during my user research.
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Unclear cost for services
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More information on Tagged items
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Information organization
Seeking Inspiration
Taking further after User research I took a step ahead and compared with competitors from that some of the competitors to build organized, a clear and intuitive app for users and for professionals. By accessing and comparing flows, organized clarity and design consistency I gained insights where I can gain competitive advantage and also better understand user's expectation within an app.
Persona Development
Based on my finding, a majority of users were professional and use an app for their projects and clients. My primary persona was Katherine and other two secondary personas that represent other pain points. These three personas were referenced throughout the design process to ensure I am addressing the right pain points and needs.
Katherine is an Interior Designer self-employed working in New York City her job requires her to stay current with all things design and decoration for her clients and according to her Houzz is one of the best sources out there for this.
DELIVERABLES
Ideate and Iterate
Sketching out my idea on paper allows me to rapidly iterate and try a number of different approaches, I went through several iterations of sketching, discussions, and feedback until I settle down a perfect design fit to my user’s need.
Here are the Low-fidelity wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframes for Ipad
Key Insights
Information on the cost of items and services is clear. Information around tagged items and item detail view are much more organized and clean.
In my next steps, I would like to gather some feedback on the proposed changes and work on improving them.