I determined four red routes to design for this project. The first two are MVP for completed for purchase. The other two are available features the serve to help users confidently choose their decks.

• Adding a product to cart.

• Completing the guest checkout process.

• Deck recommendation tool.

• Deck comparison tool.

 These mid-fidelity wireframes were created from eight-minute sketches I made prior to this step. My goal for this stage was to avoid reinventing the wheel by creating an e-commerce experience that was standard to the research I’d done previously. So, the only new and uncharted territory I was designing for was the subject matter, the deck comparison tool, and the deck recommender tool.

 I visited a Barnes & Noble book store and asked five individuals to participate in a quick test of my design. I specifically hovered around the ‘games’ section of the store hoping to find users who’d be buying playing cards— one of the individuals (who refused the test) was actually buying cards for her son for Christmas. In fact, I helped her pick out a deck of cards using the knowledge that I learned from my user research in addition to my understanding of how her son likely intended to use the deck of cards.  

Guerilla testing revealed that the ‘add to cart’ and ‘guest checkout’ flows were currently frictionless. These tests confirmed that the deck recommender and deck compare tool were on track, but these tools could not be properly evaluated by individuals outside of the target user.

Dealer’s Choice would benefit from conducting a design sprint to further enhance the deck finder feature. Currently, the deck finder appeals more to non-magicians and it could use more advanced options to potentially appeal to magicians. Additionally, performing an A/B test of the browsing filters— specifically the toggle between front, back, and tuck case view— would validate the execution of this feature which has not been tested and is not as established in UX practice (from what I can tell from researching examples).

Dealer’s Choice was suffering from cart abandonment and poor browsing capabilities for users. To impact these metrics, I created a guest checkout to help alleviate abandonment at the registration page and also enhanced the flexibility of product browsing with ample opportunities to view, investigate, and compare products. The deck comparison tool and product page detail infographics were particularly impactful during usability testing and coveted by all participants. The deck recommender prooved helpful to the layperson who may stumble across the site for gift purchases, but otherwise would need to be workshopped if Dealer’s Choice would like to market the tool towards magicians. Overall, as my first time designing for e-commerce ever, I feel I’ve scraped the surface of the fascinating complexities which e-commerce can contain. The key to the successful completion of this project was definitely planning and time boxing— thanks past self for setting me up for success!

1. Interviewing your target users is great, but still consider a few participants just outside that target group. I received targeted feedback and insight from actual magicians about the products and how they would buy them. In addition, my non-magician participants gave constructive feedback on how potential users that  stumbled onto the site would interact with it. This revealed equally important insights, such as designing for gift purchasing.

2. E-commerce is highly complex and convoluted because of all the details each product can have— price, rating, color, model, and so much more. A savvy designer aims to streamline the user’s experience so that they can find a specific product quickly and efficiently. 

3. In the discovery phase of an ecommerce design challenge, make sure to interview the stakeholders about their product, brand and discounts or sales they have coming up. I based the product’s prices on the prices I uncovered during the Industry Leaders Analysis. However, I was unsure as to how a company actually determines pricing, given that real-life companies include sales and discounts. During the usability testing, all participants mentioned looking for a discount of some form. Absent any discounts, the site and its business may suffer against their competition.

4. It is imperative that there are multiple high-quality images of the product. Every test user tried to view multiple images of the product. Many decided to click on an item because its picture was cool.

5. Designing for a primarily white UI was a challenge in visual accessibility. Beware low contrasting color choices against white, especially for caption text. I performed an accessibility audit when deciding colors originally, and then again during the last iteration phase. Increasing the font weight or size can help reach AA standard.