Objective
The objective of the project was to create the web as well as mobile application design for an hypothetical company called Maynooth Furniture, to sell their furniture online and for the user's to analyze and purchase the furniture as per their needs in addition with some inspirational ideas.
Competitive analysis
Following websites has been taken for the competitive analysis before designing the Maynooth Furniture:
- IKEA is a well known furniture selling company Internationally
- The company does have complex hierarchy design due to large variety of product but provides decent UI and good categorization of the products
- However, if you simply want to add the product in the cart, there is no way to add it without opening it in separate page.
- Further, the magnification of the image has to be done by clicking on the image which can be troublesome for some people considering a bit time consuming for them.
- The website provides good UI with some decent animation
- I think, the product page on selecting a specific product does not use proper padding and spaces and the most of the page has been taken with the lots of reviews, which can be unnecessary for users
- The animation of the magnifying the product can be better considering various means of improvements
- The website has complex hierarchy of the content demonstrated with simple and efficient UI Design
- Provides good information about the method of payment accepted as well as trusting certification and delivery partners.
- Less customization options are available with the product for the customer to select.
Goal
From the competitive analysis done above, the following pain points or goals has been set for the Maynooth Furniture:
1. The home page should provide the clear picture about the companies products and services
2. Customer should be able to add the product based on the liking of thumbnail images only
3. The images should be large enough to clearly portrayed the product
4. Customer should be able to create their wishlist's before adding them into their cart along with the customization of the products available.
Persona
The design has been made considering Katherine in mind. Also, for the purpose of this project, not all the pages has been designed but only the Home page, Product page are design to demonstrate the idea.
User persona - katherine
Wireframes
Maynooth wireframes
Mood boards
Maynooth moodboard
High-fidelity web and mobile application designs
High fidelity web design mockup
Mobile application design
High fidelity mobile application design mockup
Challenges
1. Lots of thought process was given on designing the CTA to egg the visitors on through the sales funnel
2. Determining the homepage content as well as designing the product page to showcase the required information of the product both in web as well as mobile application
3. Determining the navigation flow for the mobile application along with providing the functionality of new technologies was difficult.
Key takeaways
1. Improvement in research and analytical skills along with critical thinking about users' perspective
2. Gained some good understanding as well as implementation practice of some user design principals
3. Improvised some designing skills both in wireframes as well as high-fidelity prototyping
4. Grasping and using software like Adobe XD with its auto-animate features, Illustrator and image editing in Photoshop has been developed.
5. Gained some typography knowledge for designing the fonts
