A feature within the Etsy mobile app that allows customers to post a product request and receive quotes from sellers.
Context
THE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Etsy provides a place for makers to sell their goods and reach a greater audience. Customers can search for the items, but sometimes they have a specific product in mind that they’d like created for them. Etsy would like to create a feature that allows customers to post a product request and receive quotes from artisans.
THE PROCESS
Timeline: 2-week sprint
My Role: Design Lead; User Interviews, Usability Testing, Design Studio, Wireframing + Prototyping
Key Methods: Organizational research + user interviews, Data collection + interpretation, Competitive analysis, Sketching, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability testing, Iterating, High-fidelity wireframes
Tools: Pencil and paper, Communication: Slack, Collaboration: Google Drive, Wireframes: Sketch, Prototype: InVision
Research
After conducting organizational research and user interviews, we defined the current process:
Customers create custom orders based on existing listings
Customers will reach out to sellers via the messaging feature
Sellers will edit listings for custom transactions
Personas
Based off of our background research and user interviews, we created two personas. Our primary persona is Lloyd the Customer. Since the corresponding seller feature was not the main feature in our project scope, Jane the Seller is our secondary persona.
Comparative Analysis
I looked at similar models, other sites with interactions/commerce between 2 main user types: Consumers and vendors, and examined the relationships between the two. I was looking for sites with:
Communication between vendors and customers
Searchability (vendors can find customers’ listings based off of their searching. Saved searches could be helpful for vendors)
Ideation
Based off of the research, user interviews, and the resulting personas, I defined that in order for this product to be effective, we would need to create two distinct features:
Customer App
A feature where customers can create listings for custom items and receive bids from sellers who can fulfill their requests
Seller App
A feature that allows sellers to search listings for potential projects and make bids on projects of interest to them
Sketches
I copied the existing Information Architecture from the seller’s existing listing process in order to create the listing process for the customer’s new feature.
Initial Prototypes
I created two prototypes, one for the customer, and one for the seller. At this point we realized that creating fully fleshed out features for both the customer app and the seller app was outside of our project scope. We decided to focus mainly on the customer’s new feature. Please feel free to view both prototypes to get a sense of how these two user types would interact with the addition of the new feature.
User Testing
I conducted usability testing which exposed the following painpoints:
● User task completion time inhibited by an inability to identify how to navigate through the categories in the listing process in 3 out of 5 users.
● 4 out of 5 users were unable to complete the add photos task without assistance
● 4 out of 5 of the users incorrectly identified the “custom” feature heading in the navigation bar as a search function, and not the new listing feature that we created.
Redesign
As a result of the usability testing, as a team we redesigned the category pages so that when I created the final prototype, users would only need to go through one screen (left) before beginning their custom listing as opposed to 8 screens (right). This change to the design significantly reduced the task completion time in a later usability test.
I also updated the header so that the Custom feature is differentiated from the other functions (below). The purpose of this change was to aid the user in finding the new feature we created.
Final Design
The final product includes:
A streamlined listing process where users can add photos
Communication between customers and sellers
A section within the "Custom" feature for the customer to view bids
A way for the customer to tag their listing with search terms so that sellers can discover them
Next Steps
Finish designing the seller interface to further illustrate the interactions between both user types
Provide user education to promote the new feature and aid with usability. The goal here would be to have a modal appear to guide users through finding and using the new feature for the first time. The plan is to conduct usability testing on the placement and format for the user education.