— PROJECT NAME

House of CB UX/UI Design

— ROLE

UX/UI Designer

UX Researcher

Branding

— TIMELINE

Two Weeks

Can you imagine a world without eCommerce? Imagine the amount of inconvenience and stress that arises due to not being able to shop online from the comfort of your home. Pre-online shopping, people used teleshopping, this heavily focused on the user interface because if it is presented as a necessity, people are more inclined to purchase. As a result, websites tend to focus primarily on the user interface; ensuring the brand identity is reflected and the looks aesthetically pleasing, so much so that they overlook the user experience.

House of CB

After extensive research I chose House of CB because it is an emerging competitor that has taken the industry by storm since being founded in 2010 by a 17 year old woman. The brand has grown from being a small online store to a huge online store with retail stores in the United Kingdom (UK) and United States of America (USA) and is on the way to gaining international exposure. They are very unique because similarly to Amazon the brand started online and now has retail stores.

Michael Aldrich from the United Kingdom invented online shopping in 1979 and one of the earliest users of this innovation was Book Stacks Unlimited which we now know as books.com, an online bookstore created in 1992 two years before Amazon was founded. The first internet online shopping transaction happened on August 12, 1994, which was documented by an issue of the New York Times titled "The internet is open". Since then Amazon launched the first eCommerce mobile website which grew and resulted in over one third of eCommerce sales in the USA were made on a mobile device, as of 2017.

"The history of fashion is a history of people"

www.businessoffashion.com

What is the fashion industry?

The fashion industry has existed for decades but online fashion took the world by storm a mere 50 years ago and continues to grow as technology develops, competitors emerge and businesses explore innovation. As people have adapted, trends have changed and designers have explored innovation the industry has developed into the industry we all know and love today.

How has it changed over the past 10 years?

The Advertising Agency London reported that the fashion industry has been steadily growing over the past 10 years, based on this steady growth they expect to see a minimum growth of 3% per annum in the coming years. Experts project the fashion retail and eCommerce sales to surpass $2.1trillion by 2025. This shows the rate and speed at which this industry is expanding.

The shift from retail to online

Between 2008 and 2017, stores have become decreasingly unpopular which is reflected in Table 1.1. which depicts how clothing stores are having to close due to the decrease in footfall in stores, although considering the 9 year gap it is not a significant decrease, which suggests people are still happy to shop in store.

COVID-19 has forced a shift into the online space

As of June of 2020, it was projected that eCommerce will reach $450billion in sales by the end of 2020. Compared to other industries the fashion industry has not suffered as much as apparel industry

The trend is clear, there is a huge spike in the rate of shopping activity from the week commencing March 15th, national lockdown began in the UK on March 16th 2020, this shows a clear correlation between Covid-19 and shopping. See Table 2.1.

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The number of orders between 2019 and 2020 increased by 57% which is a substantial amount of growth compared to the months prior to the lockdown, with only 2% increase in online shopping sales in January and 6% in February. This shows that globally people began relying on the internet to do their shopping.You can you this place to talk a little bit about the image on the side.

Retail store and online only stores

House of CB began as an eCommerce store and eventually grew into retail stores, knowing how progressive the internet and innovation have been in recent years it is surprising to see that they have opened multiple stores, however there has only been a marginal decrease in the number of retail stores in the UK (see Table 1.1).

Hypothesis

By the end of this case study I hope to have found methods of resolving the different pain points identified from my research. I am going to redesign the House of CB website to include user experience necessities as defined by the users whilst ensuring the user interface is WCAG compliant which means there should be no accessibility issues with my design.

The website needs to meet the user's needs without losing the brand image and whilst making sure the user experience and interface fundamentals are not compromised e.g. law of common region, hicks law etc. The ultimate goal is to optimise UX, UI, meet WCAG regulations, easy to navigate, functional and increases revenue and conversation rates.

I will redesign 3 pages, the home page, the dresses landing page and the single item page. This case study documents the process of getting from my perspective to the user's perspective to applying all the research in between to a completed redesign on desktop and mobile screens. Follow along as we delve into ways to better present the House of CB website.

Research Phase

Primary and Secondary

— PROBLEMS

Project title

— BUSINESS RESEARCH

Competitor Analysis

— USER RESEARCH

1. The text was too small on the navigation bar
2. There was different UI for the website on desktop screens and mobile screens
3. There

Direct Competitor Analysis

A few of House of CB's direct competitors include, Zara, Prettylittlething, ASOS and Missguided.

In-direct Competitor Analysis

A few in-direct competitors of House of CB are Amazon, Ebay and IKEA. Amazon launched in 1995 was one of the first e-commerce websites and is now the largest online retailer in the world. Ebay is another successful eCommerce marketplace that began in 1995.

User Research

After conducting in-depth research I decided to do both surveys and questionnaires to get a more well-rounded view on what the users want and need. In order to create my user profile I had to conduct research into what the average user looked like, according to my research the target market should focus on 16 to 34 year olds as they spend a substantial amount of time on their phones and purchase the most amongst the demographic.

This coupled with the type of eCommerce brand House of CB is brought me to the conclusion that the user profile should be:

Name: Ashley Banks

Gender: Female

Age: 30

Occupation: Full-time Employed

Background: British born woman living in Essex, United Kingdom. Loves fashion, studied graphic design and works hard at a 9-5 and fully optimises social hours on the weekends.

The survey was created using google forms (https://forms.gle/bjZUjHNXeMQyt4Nh8) and generated 25 responses:

I also conducted short-interviews with three users, below are the results of my interviews:

Short Interview Results

Wire-framing Phase

Low, Mid and High Fidelity

Crazy 8s

This was my preferred ideation technique because I find that it removes the "perfectionist" in me and allows me to be more dynamic in my designs. I also find that it gives me an opportunity to explore a wider range of options as opposed to just going with my most thought about and refined idea. I can see the possibilities of my designs and build upon it to create my final product.

The process was simple, get a piece of paper, split it into 8 sections, set my timer to 8 minutes which allows for approximately 1 minute maximum per design. The purpose of this technique is to generate as many design ideas as possible, it does not focus at all on high quality work, that comes after the technique has been carried out, the ideas are then refined during the wire framing phase.

This served as a basis for the applying the business and user research to the design to create the most ideal user experience. This exercise solely focuses on the user's experience and ensuring the key requirements are there which then leaves room for the user's needs to be met and user's wants to be explored.