ShoePalace
Founded in 1993, over 167 Stores across USA
Client
AJS Cloud, CaliforniaRole
UI/UX DesignerYear
2019 - 2020Platform
MobileOverview
Shoe Palace has been a leading athletic footwear and apparel seller over the past few decades. Because of its immense popularity and sales they wanted to develop an app that will help sneaker and apparel lovers to find their picks without effort.
Challenges
1. Current website does not have data on physical store availability
2. Also there is no information of upcoming products data
3. Ability to login quickly
4. Promotions and product categorization is missing
5. Create effortless shopping experience
6. Design a loyalty program for users
Approach
1. Research
In order to build a solid foundation, I started understanding the applications related to shoe and apparel industry. The research helped in getting to know about the target audience and their needs. The following are the research goals that I have aimed for:
Goals of Research
1. Identify best practices for displaying the data in the app
2. Understand how the world's best companies are giving the shopping experience
3. Get to know who the users are
4. Gather the pain points of users while shopping
5. What are the different features or aspects users are looking for?
6. Understand the user shopping preferences
5. Identify what motivates a user to purchase
5. Understand what the user values for what he does not in terms of sneakers and apparel
Competitor Analysis
The initial step I had taken was to do competitor analysis on the most prominent
shoe brands in the industry such as Adidas, Nike, Goat, Snkrs, Goat & Sneaker District.
This helped in getting insights on the key features.
Each app focused typically on their specific need, whether it is product selling, product information or reselling sneakers.
Adidas had stood out enormously in all aspects be it in terms of design or functionality.
Likewise, Nike gave the best onboarding experience collecting different kinds of user preferences.
This method helped in giving user a personalized shopping experience. While Goat was more into providing
innovative ways of product discoverability and it gave user the ability to resell his/her used shoes.
It was a phenomenal step taken by them to consider global environmental sustainability.
Survey
I created and conducted a survey using Google forms to better understand about empathizing and who our users where. It was necessary to understand their pain points, values, and shopping patterns. We targeted all age groups who are typically US residents.
-
18
Responses
(Google Forms)
User Personas
I created and conducted a survey using Google forms to better understand about empathizing and who our users where. It was necessary to understand their pain points, values, and shopping patterns. We targeted all age groups who are typically US residents.
Define
In order to build a solid foundation, I started understanding the applications related to shoe and apparel industry. The research helped in getting to know about the target audience and their needs. The following are the research goals that I have aimed for:
Task & Design Management
To stay in sync with all the members of the team,
we used a software called as open project. Here I documented each and every design phase steps
and other meeting discussions data. Any work related to design would be signed to me
with the status of priority. By this method, I was able to prioritize the tasks and
was able to use the time very efficiently.
Once a task is completed, the status would be changed to completed and the team would have a call
to discuss the updates done. This method proved to be very effective for the project.
User Flow
Based on all the above findings, and brainstorming
on what features to be implemented to the application, I have focused on creating
a high level user flow architecture for the application. This was to ensure that
the user's pathway or flow was as clear, and intuitive.This also acted as a guidance
in the entire design and development phase since it allowed users to quickly see
the logical flow.
Design & Prototype
In this phase, I started to work on drawing low fidelity sketches of the actual application. This helped in visualizing my ideas and give a basic structure to the workflow created. I had first started to work on the onboarding screens and then moved forward to create screens for next steps in the user flow.
Sketches & Wireframes
UI Designs
Once all the wireframes were finalized by
the client, I was given a heads-up to proceed to the UI designing. While working on
the visuals of the application, I have considered typography, colors, and
images from the ShoePalace website and their Instagram page to create brand
consistency across the platform.
During the creation of these screens, I have used all the research phase data
to bring solutions to the challenges and made sure that the shopping experience
is done effortlessly. After multiple iterations and experiments with the look
and feel of the application, the following designs are the final outputs.
01.
1. By including a biometric or face ID verification for logging into the app, the process has become super quick!
2. Data throughout the app was carefully organized and arranged as per the usage and popularity
02.
1. Asking for product preferences at the onboarding gives the user a personalized experience
2. Ensured that the app design is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive
3. To enhance the search, I have kept the pre-defined categories that users usually search and recent searches by that user. This makes the search a hassle-free task
03.
1. All upcoming products have a notify 'toggle'. This notifies the user when the product is live for sale
2. Minute UX methodologies make a huge impact on the user. One such thing I have followed is to have half interstitial popups i.e, towards the bottom. Accessibility of button gets easier to user
04.
1. By including 'X miles away' option in product description page, user was able to know where the product is physically available
2. User has an ability to either redeem the loyalty points or the promotion code discount
3. The user can change the quantity directly from cart instead of going back to the product detail page
05.
1. To encourage the users to purchase more goods, the loyalty points scheme is divided into 3 categories: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Each of these classes have its own privileges. Higher the purchases, higher are the points and ultimately, the user goes to the next category with more benefits and privileges.
2. To redeem these points in a physical store, user can show their unique QR code during the time of purchase. The code will be enlarged by clicking on it. This can avoid the making and distribution of cards. This helps to preserve the nature and its sustainability.
06.
1. Each order has a detailed page where the user can view the order details. Once an order is delivered, the user is eligible for a return window depending on the product. The return window helps in increasing the trust and sales
2. If the user clicks on return option, a chatbot will initially gather the details and assign it to a personal ShoePalace assistant. This will save the user a lot of time by not visiting the offline store
Current Status
All the designs had been provided to the development team. Once the development phase had been completed, it will be released to the users.
