Queenly is a marketplace startup with an online handle and mobile application. Through contextual research, user interviews and user testing, I gathered data about context and user behavior and delivered a comprehensive report of the findings as well as an interactive wireframe prototype in high fidelity. Practices that usually would only be used for larger products but that worked out beautifully for them.

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Context

In order for Queenly to expand, they want to onboard dress partners to their inventory, and separate these partners from regular resale items to strengthen their next gen revenue model. At the time of this project, it had seen a few redesigns but the current version was over 3 years old. A newer UX design and Tech applications are also needed.

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Problem

Despite its great PageRank, thousands of monthly visits and being a helpful tool for client acquisition and follow-up purchases, the marketplace had a very low conversion rate.Several potential causes had been pointed out by the client and some users, such as the complexity of the process or its’ length. But these and other assumptions about the user’s behaviors and context had to be validated.

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Goal

How might we improve the user’s experience, so that we attract new users and the conversion rates increase?

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Process

Through contextual research, user interviews and user testing with the existing platform, I intended to:

• Document the offline and online purchase processes;
• Understand the usage context and user’s needs;
• Discover what worked well and bad with the current website.
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Results and Deliverables

1. A comprehensive report with key conclusions regarding the user’s context, intention, and interaction patterns, drawn from 6 interviews with both clients and non-clients.

2. An interactive wireframe prototype which included dozens of fixes to problems found during research and solutions to speed up and improve the interaction.

3. An complete design system includes customized icons to be use in web & mobile

Status

Finished. Awaiting for development to end and for the final launch to test results.

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Stage 1 - Contextual Research

I did a redesign for both their online platform and app. Architect branding guidelines and design system for delopment team to sustain the brand elements. I started with in-depth UX research on their current market size, further investigate Queenly's current customer pain points with swot analysis, user interviews of stakeholders & seller/buyer.

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Stage 2 — User Interviews and Tests

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Stage 3—  Processing Data and Findings

Link to detailed recommendation plan and UX analytics: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DArNPKlai9dgKdSqk29yhyB5PrXoatp5dRWxiTZOJEg/edit?usp=sharing

Processing interview data took a few hours of work while going through answers, live notes and, in some cases, going back to the screen recordings to check for facts. A few patterns quickly emerged and we made discoveries that could have a serious impact on the interface and the business, and major blocks to the whole experience.

For instance, just on the 1st stage we discovered that users spent 33% of their session time merely browsing to the right category. There were comments on how hard it was to perceive the final look and feel of the dress from the tiny images, and how hard it was to choose among 800 options. In the end, some acknowledged that these specific negative points made them uncomfortable about finishing the buy and would probably make them leave.

Many other conclusions were drawn from these tests which ended up influencing design and business decisions, all of which were compiled in a comprehensive report.

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Stage 4— The Prototype

This prototype was presented and validated with the client but also with the engineers in charge, who was very satisfied with how much hard work had already been done. Alongside the InVision prototype, a series of recommendations were also delivered to make sure that the user needs would be met throughout production.

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Web & App Prototype on Invision

Web : See here

App : See here

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Stage 4— Design System & UI

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Conclusion

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It’s a matter of having all the content and options that need to be displayed. But had this gone straight to interface design and I wouldn’t have found out so much about how people interact with the brand, the website and the business.

Overall this was a very interesting challenge to be involved with, and it was only possible thanks to the collaboration of 3 client stakeholders, 3 online clients, 3 guest users, and the final development team.

I’m currently waiting to see the final results and to measure the impact on the conversions but it was a pleasure to find solutions for these users. This website isn’t going to change the world but hopefully, it will improve the growth of this business and the clients’ experience.

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