Underground Printing - UX Research
Project Client
Underground Printing
Time
Fall 2021
Team
Anny Chen, Eugenia Yang, Hongdan Wang, Manvitha Madem, Tyler Thomas
Role
UX Researcher
Skills
User Interviews, Interaction Mapping, Persona, Survey, Competitive Analysis, Usability Testing
Introduction
As one of my core courses at the University of Michigan, “Needs Assessment and Usability Evaluation”, students were divided into teams of 5 and tasked to work with an industry sponsor on a given problem statement and formulate a research-based solution.
My group chose to work with Underground Printing, an online custom apparel and accessories company, which allows customers to design and order their own products on the Underground Printing website.
💭 Prompt
Underground Printing is looking for suggestions to improve user interface throughout the entire shopping experience, from the catalog to design to quote to checkout.
Focus on the mobile experience
Customers come from all fifty states and vary in every demographic aspect
Let’s see how we approach the problem 👇
✍️ Research Process
💁 We started with Interaction Mapping to know current problems.
Pain points:
😨 There were redundant steps throughout the process.
😨 The website asks users to fill out their zipcode multiple times.
Then, we interviewed five potential users in different positions and organizations. We also conducted a survey to understand target users.
Key Findings
Experienced Users have previous knowledge and experience using design tools. They use upload functions on customized printing websites.
Inexperienced Users are new to using design tools. They rely on design tools provided by printing websites, and they take advantage of template, text, and clip arts.
Competitive analysis
Key Findings
1. Competitors had a more succinct user flow from the beginning to the end of their checkout process.
2. Important buttons are not salient and informative enough on the Underground Printing website.
3. It’s essential to place customer services fixed to the navigation bar.
We did Heuristic Evaluation for the previous mobile website to understand current problems.
Key Findings
1. UI elements are inconsistent throughout the website.
2. Design space displayed on mobile applications suffers from poor accessibility as most of the design tools and features can’t be accessed freely.
3. Website doesn’t allow the users to efficiently move back in a process or troubleshoot an encountered problem.
Finally, we conducted 6 Usability Testings for mobile experience.
🤯 Limitation:
1. Demographic: our demographics revolve around the student community which could result in our findings being a bit biased.
2. Users performed tasks on different devices, which results in a different understanding of the problem.
Mission Statement & Goal
Given our research findings, we define four main problems:
The overall UI elements are inconsistent and some buttons are not accessible. (unpleasant experience)
Users take a long time to select products. (inefficient)
Users can’t find the buttons they are looking for, so it’s hard for them to navigate. (inefficient)
The user flow is longer than competitors. This may cause cart abandonment. (inefficient)
We then set up the design goals: Making Underground Printing website delightful, intuitive, and efficient.
