DIGITAL - 2019

WHAT IS MAYNOOTh?

Maynooth is a furniture store run by the Tierney family and based in the east of Ireland with stores in dotted around Munster, Leinster and Connacht. The store has recently gained in popularity due to a snappy, voguish Instagram presence and collective love from many of the locals after many years warm and helpful service.

IT’s KINDA HARD TO SELL FURNITURE THE TRADITIONAL WAY

For such a store, it can be difficult getting customers outside of the local area without a robust social media presence. Buyers don’t come to Maynooth just to browse and leave, most are there because they were passing through or live close to the store or because they badly wanted to buy an item they saw on Instagram. To progress to the next stage of their business, the Tierney family need to invest in an online store that replicates the in-store service they provide while also battling the competition of behemoths dominating the market like Ikea, Argos or DFS.

USE THE SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL AESTHETIC TO OUR ADVANTAGE

I was to identify opportunities and utilize my knowledge in designing a solution to an e-commerce service where users can browse and buy furniture items, but also to design an experience where users can get a feel for room styles, come to be inspired by colors and item arrangements and bring that sense of exploration one gets walking into a furniture store into the online world in a voguish and modern new way.

FINDING THE ISSUES IN FURNITURE SHOPPING

For an online service like this, where the target audience is mainly homeowners or parents with busy schedules, I decided that 1-on-1 interviews were essential in order to empathize with their situations and discover the issues people face when buying furniture online. I really wanted to delve into the narratives of our users to identify opportunities and reduce gaps in sustainable online furniture shopping. Out of 5 semi-structured interviews, I was able identify the core struggles and stressors that people faced.

WHAT DOES THE COMPETITION LOOK LIKE?

I wanted to get an understanding of what the competition was in both the furniture commerce sector and social media. The aim was to get an insight into the solutions provided by other brands, stores and services in terms of features and to see what would and wouldn't work for Maynooth. I decided to go for:

1. Ikea: A famous furniture retailer known for their easy to use website and a unique in-store experience.

2. Habitat: A lesser known furniture retailer with a trendy, well designed online store.

3. Pinterest: An image focused social media platform utilized by many for style inspiration and mood-board creation.

Who are my users?

• The Executive

  Katherine is an executive at an international medical device company, she earns $110,000 per year and is both style and price conscious. She has children at university and browses style guides on Pinterest in her spare time.

• The Single Parent

  Sarah is a single parent living in the suburbs outside the city. She finds it hard to manage her time between work and housekeeping and relies on her parents for a brief oasis outside of motherhood. She is an avid Instagram user and tends to follow a lot of style and fashion pages.

• The College Student

  Leah is doing her masters and is in the second year of her program. She has moved into a small apartment just outside the university campus and has gotten into plant keeping and decorating in her spare time. She frequents the internet to get ideas on how to stylize her apartment.

BUYING FURNITURE ONLINE CAN BE PROBLEMATIC

Shopping for anything online comes with some risks, sometimes what arrives isn’t quite what you imagined you’d be getting at the checkout. Plug this in with clunky interfaces and choice paralysis and you have yourself an online experience that causes more stress than it physical counterpart. The journey map for Katherine further supported the existence of these main problems and got a discussion going on possible opportunities and solutions that lay ahead of us in the design process.

HOW MIGHT WE?

I decided to use the 'How Might We' method to try to come up with a variety of different solutions to the problem and to turn insights from the 'Discover Phase' and the 'Define Phase' into opportunities for my own design. At the start of the project, I had three main questions in mind:

thirty-five sticky notes

I needed to lay out all the data and brainstorming ideas I had gathered, and get a better understanding of the potential users and how I could design a relevant and useful service for them. I organized the findings into groups in an Affinity Map. Using this map I could identify common habits, function options and opportunities.

SEPARATING THE GOOD FROM THE UGLY

Jksabjx

NAVIGATING OUR WAY THROUGH MAYNOOTH

To get a clear and concise picture of all the possible routes a user could take, I mapped out an entire user flow chart. This way I could identify any missing connections, features or opportunities.

GETTING THOSE IDEAS DOWN

I started my ideation and design phase by sketching out different potential designs on what the interface might look like. I found this particularly helpful in a solo project like this as it helped me see clearly what would and what wouldn't work. It was also a really good way to brainstorm different ideas and spot alternative opportunities.

GOING DIGITAL (AFTER MAKING SOME CHANGES)

After several rounds of testing, I iterated and improved the design based on user feedback and using Adobe XD, designed a high-fidelity wireframe for further testing.

LET THE PEOPLE CHOOSE

I created alternate wireframes of the “product details” and ‘product list’ pages and ran A/B tests. The A/B tests helped me figure out what users preferred in terms of the ease of digesting the content, entering data, and visual appeal.

INJECTING SOME STYLE INTO THIS

The process of creating the branding style around Maynooth changed on one or more occasions. The original style of Maynooth’s brand was very similar to the one used in the first digital wireframe designs. After gathering feedback and applying my own design suggestions, I decided to use a cleaner style with a revised color palette. I wanted the Maynooth experience to be clean, calm and minimalist with a dash of personality inspired by modern day furniture design trends.