WAYFAIR: "I'll Know It When I See It"
My Role
UX Design
User Research
Prototyping
Project Management
Company
Team
3 HFID masters students
Date
February, 2019
Client Summary
Wayfair is an eCommerce furniture and home goods destination helping everyone, anywhere, create their feeling of home. Wayfair is driven by a world-class team with the future always in mind – constantly striving to help everyone, anywhere, create spaces that are just right for them. (Source: Wayfair)
Project Goals & Research Questions
Past research has shown that customers come to Wayfair with an idea in their head and have a hard time finding exactly what they have in mind. The goal of this project was to find a way to help the “I’ll know it it when I see it” customers narrow down breadth of catalog through some method of explicit or implicit personalization. To do so, we set out to answer the following research questions:
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What do people want their homes to look/feel like?
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Why do people spend money on their homes?
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What is the process by which someone browses for a product?
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How do people locate a product they are looking for?
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How do people get ideas/inspiration for what to buy?
Tools Used
Google Drive
Team collaboration and organization
Google Meet
Conduct and record virtual interviews
Google Forms
Create and distribute survey
Microsoft Excel
Create notes sheet, compile notes from all user interviews and survey
Pencil & Paper
Sketch design ideas
Adobe XD
Create design prototypes to share with client
Google Slides
Present our findings
Discovery Phase
1. Data Collection Methods
Decided which data collection methods to use based on the problem we are trying to solve and the questions we are trying to answer
2. Collected Data
Conducted semi-structured interviews, a brief ethnographic study, and collected survey responses
3. Analyzed Data
Triangulated and analyzed data across all data collection methods
4. Identified Themes + Personas
Extracted highlights from collected data, identified recurring themes across participants, and developed personas based on those themes
The Process
1
Research
Survey
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Distributed survey to friends & family of all team members
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Looked specifically at age ranges 25-33 y/o and 55-62 y/o (based on Wayfair's site visit statistics)
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Looked for trends within specified age ranges
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Used highlights to develop characteristics of personas
Semi-Structured Interviews
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Used notes grid to keep answers to questions comparable across participants
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Extracted highlights from participants’ answers
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Used highlights to develop characteristics of personas
Ethnographic Study
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Observed participants overall shopping process
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Sites used
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Search keywords
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Experience flow​
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2
Ideation
Conducted an ideation session using the iterative design studio method:
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Each team member came to session with several sketch designs
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Critiqued each others' sketches using the personas we created
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After each iteration, we refined our idea(s) and sketched again
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Collaborated to land on two features to move forward with​
Design + Prototyping
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Took ideas from ideation phase and fleshed out in more detail
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Presented initial ideas to Wayfair team and gathered feedback
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Iterated on the design to incorporate Wayfair feedback
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Began wireframing with Adobe XD
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Finalized prototype
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Findings Summary
We identified three main themes during our research that informed our proposed solution:
Customers draw inspiration from others' homes
Customers have a hard time finding what they want
People want their space to "feel" a certain way
Persona 2
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Age: 59 years old
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Income: $150k
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Story: Lives in a house with husband and two kids
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Draws Inspiration From: Google searches, home goods websites and others’ homes
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Desired Furniture Features: Decent quality, her style, fairly priced
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Most Important Aspects of a Home: Personalization and coziness
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Tensions/Barriers When Furniture Shopping: She often has a specific vision of an item that she wants and goes online to search for it but it is hard to find the right thing
Persona 1
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Age: 27 years old
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Income: $60-99k
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Story: Lives in a city apartment, moves every 2 years
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Draws Inspiration From: Social apps, Google searches, home goods websites and others’ homes
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Desired Furniture Features: Decent quality, fairly priced
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Most Important Aspects of a Home: Privacy, knows roommates, coziness
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Tensions/Barriers When Furniture Shopping: Difficulties planning which items to move from one place to another and what new things to buy. She starts out feeling excited about setting up new space but ends up feeling disappointed in the process.
With the above themes in mind, we created two key personas that Wayfair should be targeting, outlined below:
Sketches & Prototype
Sketches
Feature 1: Search and shop by vibe
Feature 2: Like this [product] but...
Final Prototype
Prototype Link
Click Here
Feature 1: Search and shop by vibe
User can shop products by the room "vibe" associated with them
User can select multiple vibes at once to really narrow their search
Feature 2: Like this [product] but...
When the user likes a product but would like to change one or several features, they can choose to browse by selecting a "Like this but..." feature
User can choose one or more "Like this but..." characteristics to apply. They will then receive recommended products that are like the original product, but have applied characteristics
