Case Study
This project started in July 2018 as a followup of an e-commerce web app that the company have previously developed for a Client. The Client had faced difficulties doing e-commerce due to the inability to find a suitable priced and available shipment courier.
The Client decided to launch his own shipment courier service to help himself, and other startups that may face the same difficulties.
Challenges / Constraints:
Time: the Client needed to have a usable version of the website within a short timeframe, which meant that there would not be enough time to conduct a detailed UX research.
Defining Requirements: the Client knew what he wanted, but had not thought the process through clearly, leading to our team spending more time defining the requirements.
Process:
Empathize: This stage included an interview with the Client to further understand the difficulties he’s facing, since he belongs to the target group.The main users of this product would be e-commerce startups. This meant that the system built had to be clear and simple enough for anyone to use, without spending much time as the people using it would owners whom are already busy with running the business. The users won’t necessarily have an e-commerce website.
Define: “ E-commerce startups need an affordable and easy to use shipping service in order to make sales and maintain customer satisfaction”
Ideate: During this phase, I discussed the project with the development team, and created a mindmap.
Prototype - Iteration 1: During this stage, the first iteration of wireframes and prototype were created. The idea was to try and keep all information available in a minimal number of pages so that the user does not need to navigate alot, and also see everything required at the same time. Users were allowed to make shipment orders without creating an account as to not feel discouraged by having to spend time creating a profile and also to allow them to build trust by a ‘trial’. The timeline was meant to keep both users and their customers updated in detail.
Testing: I created a Test Plan and a User Research plan at this phase, and conducted the actual testing. Due to time and cultural constraints, I could not recruit the tests on the target group, and conducted them with people who work at any kind of startup, but are familiar with e-commerce.
Prototype - Iteration 2: After obtaining the test results, another prototype was created with a fix to those issues and a few enhancements.
Changes:
Added the ‘ship now’ button to the top navigation to draw more attention to it since its the core of the website
Divided the forms into steps, starting with the delivery info, and letting the user sign up during the process
Narrowed Delivery Status to only 2 states
Divided the initial Member Homepage to Tabs to reduce distraction
Replaced the form in initial order detail with a ‘receipt’
