Children’s Boutique Web Experience

Client: Thank Heaven

UX Team: Emily DeWan, Katy Wyman, myself | Duration: 3 Weeks | Project Status: Complete

My Role: UX Designer, UX Researcher, Product Manager

Project Overview

Thank Heaven is a children’s boutique located in Forest Hills, Queens, founded, and owned, and operated by Ariena Thomsen. The store has been in the community for thirteen years, and has never had a formal web presence.

Scope of Work

My team — Katy Wyman, Victor De La Cruz (me), and Emily DeWan — was tasked with creating a brand new website for Thank Heaven. We conducted research to learn about customers, buying patterns of current and potential customers, analyzed the competitive market. We created mid- and high-fidelity wireframes for a responsive web design, and tested prototypes of the desktop and mobile, and iterated on. We collaborated with the development team with the handoff.

Timeframe

3 to 4 weeks

Limitations, Parameters, Resources, and Materials

We relied on awareness of our client’s stories of the community and how Thank Heaven was conceived. We paid a visit to the physical store which has a small foot traffic. The online presence has been Yelp reviews, a Facebook Page, and an Instagram. In addition, we relied on the help of her neighboring friends and daughter to help with sharing our survey on Facebook. The e-commerce presence is non-existent.

RESEARCH PHASE

Screen Survey

• Our initiative was to collect information from our target demographic. In order to screen out these individuals, we reached out via social media through a Screener Survey, which provided insights on who we needed to interview.

Results

• 26 responses
• 88% shop for their own children
• 77% shop for other children
• 96% shop for children under the age of 7

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User Interviews

• We interviewed people who rated price vs. quality as “quality and price are equal”, “quality is more important”, and “quality is most important” since Thank Heaven prides itself on top-quality items.

Interview Questions Included:

• Age
• Who are the children you are buying for?
• What age-range do you buy for?
• When shopping for children, what is most important, price or quality?

Interviewees

• 12 people

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Long Survey

• An in-depth survey was posted on Facebook to personal accounts and Thank Heaven’s business page.

Responses:

• 70 people

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Problem Statement

Thank Heaven is a store that prides itself on high-quality items made by ethical and outstanding brands. As the neighborhood has changed over the years with other small stores leaving, fewer people are out shopping, resulting in a drop in sales. Consumers love to support the community by shopping at local stores, but they also value the convenience of online shopping.

How might we create an easy way to shop for top-quality children’s products locally?

DESIGN PHASE

Design Studio: Sketching + Conceptualizing

Usability Tests and Resulting Iterations

We conducted 2 rounds of usability testing.

Round 1 of testing was with the mid-fidelity prototype

• Very easy to find store hours — either through “Contact” or at the bottom of each page
• Very easy to find directions to the store. Some people wanted to click on address at bottom on page.
• Finding featured brands was not always easy — the home page was the Brands page, which confused people.
• Community page was popular. However, client decided to hold off for now on it.
• Navigation is very clean and easy to use.

Round 2 of testing was with the high-fidelity prototype

• Very easy to find store hours — either through “Contact” or at the bottom of each page
• Very easy to find directions to the store.
• Featured brands was easy because the home page was now something different
• Navigation was very clean and easy to use.
• Site has a friendly and neighborhood-like vibe that looked like it matched what the store sells.

Prototype (at this moment I’m transitioning the prototypes to Figma)

Desktop

Click here to view the project `P5 TH – Desktop Hi-Fi v1`

Responsive

Click here to view the project `P5 TH – Response Hi-Fi v1`

Next steps

• Portrait session of client
• Gather full information of all brands and products: copy and images
• Work with development team to implement website design
• Client brings on additional help to manage the website
• Add search function
• Client sets up her inventory to be able to accommodate an e-commerce website
• E-commerce website is designed and built

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Thank Heaven Children’s Boutique was originally published in Victor de la Cruz | UX UI Portfolio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.