My Role
• Information architechture
• Requirements discovery
• UI/UX design

Team
Emily Detweiller: User testing, Visual design

Background

This project is a site redesign focusing on the homepage, collection and product pages using the brand’s existing style guide. User research and analysis of customer service inquiries identified three key problems:

• Lack of visual hierarchy and calls to action on the homepage: 0/10 users correctly identified the site type in a 5 second test
  
  
• Confusing product organization: users have trouble locating certain products and it's unclear that all products belong to collections
  
  
• Choosing a glaze color is confusing and there’s not enough information about how each one looks

To increase online sales and to address the above problems, our solutions were to:

• Create more obvious calls to action on the homepage
  
  
• Restructure product organization for a better mental model of product offerings
  
  
• Provide easy-to-find information about the studio’s in-house formulated ceramic glazes

Information Architecture 

• Products are now organized by both “type” and “collection"
  
  
• Customers looking to add more Sheldon Ceramics products to their homes can view an entire collection at a glance

Wireframing

• A large hero image with text and a “shop” button provides immediate context and a call to action.
  
  
• A swim-lane featuring cards for each Sheldon Ceramics collection puts the products into context.
  
  
• Cards providing information about ceramic glazes and another popular topic in customer service emails: one-of-a-kind pieces.

Full-Color Designs

Reflection

Though the stakeholder ended up deciding that a full site redesign was not in the studio’s near future, this project was a very useful learning experience in user-centered design.

As someone who is close with the company and familiar with their philosophy, products, and clientele, this project was a joy to work on. This also meant I was very familiar with user needs and common pain points. With a clear picture of what wasn’t working with the site, creating solutions was a satisfying way to practice the design process.

This project also taught me about conveying the importance of implementing good, custom design to stakeholders and recognizing when a business isn’t ready to make that step.

Let's chat! — nataliekiwan@gmail.com