Target Home Goods

Project Scope

  • Overview

  • Research

  • UX Vision

  • Sketches/Wireframes

  • User Testing

  • Prototype

  • Usability Testing

  • Results

My Role

- Interaction Design - UX/UI Design - 

- User Researcher - Usability Tester - 

Duration

2 weeks

 

Overview

Target is a retail chain that offers home goods, clothing, electronics & more. Our team was given the task of creating a mobile experience that would drive awareness to Target home goods, give the consumer access to exclusive home goods promotions, and the ability to shop limited edition collections. 

 
targetlogo.png
 

Defining the UX Problem

To come up with a clear UX vision, we need to answer some questions about what our solution would achieve and how customers are currently going through this experience.  

  • Target offers a wide range of products at a great value. How do we emphasize the home goods while not detracting from their other products?

  • What is the process for a typical Target home goods shopper? What is the process of a non-Target home goods shopper? Is there a difference in their process?

  • How do we keep customers engaged in the furniture shopping experience from design inspiration through purchase and how do we achieve this with a mobile experience?

 

The Process

In order to define a solution, we needed to answer the questions outlined above. The best way to do this was to speak directly with Target shoppers, home goods shoppers, interior design enthusiasts, and many more to better understand the home goods market. Once we had a better understanding we could begin to design a solution specific to Target's problem. 

uxprocessgraphic.png

Research

Survey

Our team sent out a survey on various social media platforms to gain insights from survey-takers as well as identify people we could interview further. We received over 90 responses and took away some valuable feedback. 

     Survey Results:

  • Majority of respondents are in the 25 to 44 age range.

  • More than 50% have a bachelor's degree and make $50k and above.

  • Majority of respondents described themselves as advanced in using mobile apps for shopping.

  • The most common tool used for design inspiration was Pinterest. Followed by design blogs and magazines.

    Pain Points:

  • Finding the piece they wanted at a price they could afford.

  • Creating a consistent style or theme

  • Lack of vision or inspiration

  • Thorough product descriptions, including pictures and size information

 
affintymap.png

User Interviews

After analyzing results of the survey we interviewed 7 responders, 3 of which I carried out myself, for roughly 30 minutes to gain more insight into their thoughts on Target, their motivations for home design, and their processes for buying home goods.

Analysis of User Research

To organize and analyze all of the feedback from user research we created an affinity map to discover themes and pain points. 

Personas

The affinity map organized our findings and led us to the point where we could create a primary persona as well as a secondary persona. These personas would drive our UX vision and design solutions. 

Primary Persona

Primary Persona

Secondary Persona

Secondary Persona

UX Vision

Design an engaging and immersive home goods shopping experience that provides the user with all the tools they need to browse, find inspiration, shop and make informed decisions all in one place, Target. 

Keys to achieving this vision:

  • Simulate a browsing experience similar to Pinterest or Houzz.

  • Provide immersive photos that the user can interact with while looking for inspiration.

  • Showcase special partnerships with designers and collaborators.

  • Provide thorough product information up front including price and size in order to make an informed decision.

  • Reduce the need to browse different sites or competitors to gain inspiration and piece together a cohesive style.

  • Make it easy to use on the go since many users do browsing while they are out and about.

Design

Initial Sketches

This initial sketch shows the basic flow of the new feature. As a team we decided that our solution should be a feature on the existing Target app. Many of our users were already using the Target app and we felt this added feature would drive more traffic to the Target app and would assist in following through on purchases. We would include the new feature on the main page of the app to promote it to users. 

IMG_3349.jpg
scrolldownsketch1.png

Next, we started creating wireframes in Axure so that we could get a workable prototype in the hands of our users as quickly as possible. 

 
 
 

Catalogue Page

  1. This is what we call the catalogue page. On mobile, it gives you a full screen view of the room.

  2. Price tags on items show which items can be purchased. It was important to be up front with prices to showcase Target's great value. Price tags are clickable and open up a quickshop dialogue box with more details and access to the full product details.

  3. A description of the style of the room. This helps the user define their style and create a cohesive theme.

  4. Emily Henderson banner shows that this collection features Emily Henderson products. Clicking on the banner takes you to her designer page.

  5. "in this room" list shows a list-view of all the products that are featured in this room.

  6. "add to cart" button allows users to easily add items to their cart.

  7. Product banner gives a thumbnail view of the product, its name, and the price. Clicking on the product banner takes you to the full product description page.

 

Browse Page

  1. All rooms shown are made up of Target products. Users can browse full rooms as opposed to single products.

  2. We chose a masonry layout that is familiar to most users. The different sizes guide the users eye down the page as they browse.

  3. Special collections are highlighted with tags on the images. These designate collaborations or collections with designers.

 
 

User Testing

As soon as our team had an MVP that we could put in front of users we wanted to test it. We conducted 5 user tests with the purpose of validating the features we designed as well as getting notes on usability and design considerations. We had the users give their overall impressions of the pages as well as complete two tasks. 

Results

Overall, impressions were very positive about the app. The testers validated our hypothesis that when searching for home goods, users typically search online for rooms that inspire their design choices and then they seek out a specific piece or style on other sites to purchase from. Our feature allowed the user to carry this all out on the Target app with Target products. A "Pinterest-style" scroll of rooms was a feature people were already comfortable with and really liked to browse different looks. The other feature that received lots of praise was the full screen image of the room and the interactivity of the price tags. 

User testing validated the features we thought would create more engagement and a better experience for the user. We also found many things that needed to be changed based on the user testing: 

1. In some cases it was hard to distinguish between rooms. Masonry page needs to have more space between images. The inconsistent styling of the special collections was confusing. Dwell collaboration and Emily Henderson collection looked different and made it confusing 

 

"The full screen image reminded me of browsing through a catalogue, which I love to do!" 

-User 2

 
 

2. A feature that was suggested by multiple users was the ability to look at different views or zoomed in areas of the same room. Multiple angles or enhanced views would give the user more detail on the product or how items fit together. For our prototype we used in zoomed in areas of the same room but in the future we would like to use multiple angles of the same room. 

 
 
 

User Testing Rd. 2

Comparison Testing

After making improvements from the second round of testing we noticed that most users had interacted with the full screen image and the coupon tags as opposed to the list view below it. This was great news to us but it led us to wonder if the items listed below the image were redundant and could be removed from the page. We decided to conduct a comparison test on the two styles of the catalogue page. 

Our team conducted 5 tests in which we showed users the two styles and asked for their opinions on each style. 

4 out of the 5 users liked having the list view below the image. 3 of them said that even if they used the full-screen image to interact with the products they liked to see all the items in a list below. 1 of the users said they liked the list view because it was easy to quickly add multiple items from the room into their cart. 

As a result of this test we decided to keep the list view as it was originally implemented. 

 
comparisontest.png

Final Prototype

Results

There were a lot of different ways we could have pushed awareness for Target home goods, but after we did some research into how the Target persona shops, we made some interesting discoveries. Our personas think of interior design as an extension of their own personal style. Users gather inspiration and design ideas from around the web using sources like Pinterest, design blogs, and design magazines, as well other home goods brands that offer similar browsing features. Target is a destination for so many shoppers because it provides current styles and classic looks at a great value. 

Our app sought to give the Target persona the ability to search different styles, curate their look, and find the products, instantly, at the value they expect from Target. Testing with users validated our thinking that this would create an engaging experience and reduce the need to visit multiple sites. By combining the browsing features and image interactivity of other sites we were able to create an all-in-one-feature on the Target app and push awareness for Target home goods products.