Nordstrom’s Sharing Platform
Project Overview
Synopsis:
What: Our team of 3 had 2 weeks to design a feature that enhanced the Nordstrom mobile app.
Business Problem:
What: Allow shoppers to share in their shopping experience at Nordstrom.
Why: Users say they know what they want to buy but it actually takes them 15 minutes to 3 days to find an item and add it to the cart.
Roles:
My Role: Lead UX Researcher.
Purpose: Identify the feelings, moods, expectations, and pain points for our customers.
Other Members:
Camryn Kennedy: Lead Visual Designer
Morgan Long: Lead Information Architect
Proposed design for exploring new trenders on Nordstrom’s mobile app.
I led the research, interview, analysis, and testing phases of the project.
Process:
What: Used the agile approach to design a Figma prototype that allows customers to share and search for clothing looks from trenders.
Why: To provide frequent feedback to create effective designs that address the root problems of the customer.
Top methods used:
Interviews
Usability Testing
Competitive Analysis
Design Studio
Wireframes
Prototyping
Hypothesis:
What: Customers can see what they want to buy based on their friend’s social media posts, but can’t find where to buy it.
Why: Customers want to gain fashion inspiration from trenders they trust to minimize returns.
Solution:
What: Create a “looks” page for trenders to share their styles with others.
Why: This allows customers to find clothing inspirations from someone with similar style, size, and price ranges to purchase.
Research
Interviews:
What: I created the user research plan to focus on:
User expectations
What did customers expect to see when shopping online.
Moods & feelings
What frustrated and delighted customers when shopping online.
Walkthrough of clothing online shopping experience
Understanding inefficiencies and painpoints in the shopping experience.
Why: To provide insight on:
Customer’s true painpoints
Opportunities for improvement
I led interviews with 8 participants ranging from both the west and east coast of the US.
Interpreting user actions vs what users were saying:
What users were saying:
What: Based on the interviews, I found that interviewees were saying:
I want to know that I got what I expected.
If a clothing picture was of high quality, the customer wanted their delivered product to match their expectation on quality.
I want better shipping/tracking.
Want to know how long it takes for their item to arrive.
I want to make sure the size fits.
If it doesn’t fit, it’s not worth buying.
What users were demonstrating:
Why: Based on analyzing what the customers were doing, I could decipher what the underlying needs of the customer were and explain why they were saying what they were saying.
I want a faster way to know what to buy.
The time it took for a customer to decide what to buy varied from 15 minutes to 3 days despite the customer saying that they knew what they wanted when opening the app.
I want a way to see what others are buying.
Interviewees were saying that they gained inspiration on what they wanted from looking at social media posts from people they follow.
I want a way to share.
Interviewees were saying how others would ask them for fashion advice.
Defining the Problem & Solution
Persona and
problem identification:
Our target persona was Mia Addison:
Fashion trender
Follows other trenders
Influences new fashion trends.
User Problem:
Mia’s issue:
She follows trenders for fashion guidance
But can’t find where the trenders bought the clothes.
Solution:
Nordstrom’s new feature:
Allows customers to find looks based on trenders
Allow customers to share looks with others.
Visual Design
Design Studio
My team conducted 5 minute design studio exercises to sketch potential design layouts based on:
Our understanding of the problem
Inspiration from competitor research.
Sketches:
Using our design studio, we identified:
The key themes & functions to incorporate into our design.
Wireframes:
Using our sketches and user flows, our team created wireframes:
To show how our users interact with our system.
Mockup/Prototype:
Our team created mockups and a prototype for usability testing.
Our goal:
Keep the consistency of Nordstrom’s theme, nav bar, and other style elements.
User friendly design without needing to teach users how to use the app
Usability Testing & Iterations
Usability Testing:
I created our usability test plan that outlined:
What our purpose was
What user tasks we wanted to test
How we wanted to approach the usability test.
Using the prototype our team created, I could:
Begin testing with users
Give our team design insights on what to change for each iteration and why.
Iterations:
Using the insights from usability testing, I could recommend to my team what design improvements we could make to enhance the user experience.
Iteration 1:
Change the sharing icon
Users noticed our social media icons before were too small and hard to click
We based our redesign on what was commonly seen in other mobile app platforms discovered in our competitive analysis.
Remove text box border
Users kept mentioning that borders
Added clutter to the page, making it hard to find things,
This design was inconsistent with Nordstrom’s overall style.
Fleshing out other trender pages
The word “trenders” was used instead of “influencers” based on the feedback of 12 users
These users could clearly articulate what “trenders” meant to them vs “Influencers” and how it matched with our intended definition.
I noticed that Kylie Jenner’s page made some users have a negative attitude during the usability test
Some users found they didn’t associate themselves with “that demographic”.
To create a more neutral tone during the usability test
I advised my team to create alternate looks pages for other trenders like Oprah.
Iteration 2:
Change call to action buttons
Users were expressing that the buttons:
Did not match Nordstrom’s style
Could detract from the feeling of being a high end clothing platform.
Adjust wording for top nav bar
Users expressed that having “Your Stylist/Trenders”
Increased clutter in navigation
Increased user confusion
Iteration 3:
Adjust social media sharing user flow
Users found the user flow to sharing an item was unfamiliar, tedious, and confusing to navigate
Using competitive research, Morgan Long found the most common user flow for sharing posts.
Modify Instagram link
Users needed a way to identify that clicking on this word would lead them to another app.
We wanted to make the design consistent with how Instagram currently approaches it since we are redesigning for Nordstrom, not Instagram.
Bring dimension to design with button shadows
Users sometimes had difficulty identifying what could be clicked on in the app.
I suggested adding shadows to create the affordance on what could be interacted with.
Final Prototype & Next Steps
Final Prototype:
Going through our iterations provided our team with our final prototype design for sharing looks and styles with others on Nordstrom’s mobile app.
System Usability Scores:
Usability Scores from SUS surveys. More data points would be necessary to validate the results.
To ensure our redesign didn’t hinder the user experience of the Nordstrom app,
I conducted:
System Usability Score surveys with interviewees and users
Current Nordstrom app vs each iteration.
Reasoning why usability score for our first two iterations were lower than the current mobile app:
There were user flow issues where the user could get stuck
The usability score in our third iteration was on par with Nordstrom’s current mobile app:
We removed any issues where a user could get stuck in our usability tests
Resulted in a continuous flow of the tasks.
Showed our team was on the right track of ensuring our prototype’s user experience was on par with Nordstrom’s current mobile app design.
Next Steps:
If we had more time on the project, I would:
Work with Nordstrom’s design team on adjusting their top nav bar
Majority of users had difficulty finding and using Nordstrom’s top nav bar
Finding a way to make this more noticeable and easier to navigate will enhance the user experience.
Conduct further usability tests
In order to:
Get more quantitative data points
Identify more potential user pain points that can be addressed.