Overview

The Mission

Room Service Vintage is a well known and award-winning local retailer based out of Austin Texas that sells niche furniture and other vintage goods.  They are known for having a massive selection of furniture for sale that dates back to the ’50s-’70s style.  They also sell other items such as clothing, books, jewelry, and other knick-knacks that stems from a multigenerational era dating back to the 1950s.

The Problem

Room Service Vintage has a strong social media and website presence and makes wise use of these medians to update their Client’s with info.  However, they do not have any online shopping presence.

The Solution

Bridge the gap with the Room Service Vintage brand of vintage and niche combined with current technology and build an online shopping experience for Room Service Vintage to add to their existing business.

Duration:

2 weeks sprint

My Role:

UX Researcher | UX Designer

Tools:

Pen and Paper | Sketch | InVision

Type:

General Assembly Project

The Research

Observations

In order to understand the layout and organizational structure of the store I knew that just looking at pictures would not do it for me. I needed to see for myself what the store actually looked like on the outside and inside. Below are the observations found from the visit:

• All price tags on items are handwritten — potential avoidance of technology?

• Wall to wall items from furniture to lights to paintings to clothing to books and music. No easy way to know what was in stock.

• No sign of return policy.

Based on these observations, I put together the following list on how an e-commerce site could help:

• Having an e-Commerce site would give Room Service Vintage the organization and structure to their products.  Once the items are organized digitally price tags can be generated for tagging instead of handwritten tags.

• Inventory can be tracked and easily followed online by Room Service Vintage and their customers.  

• Having an e-Commerce site will allow Room Service Vintage to be transparent with their policies.

The User

The creation of the user persona was not only instrumental in seeing how users would be able to navigate and use the site for Room Service Vintage. But also incorporating the persona would help Room Service Vintage cater to clients like Joe Goodman.

User Flows, Site Map & Products Categorization

I created the user flow, site map and categorization of products to set the stage for the design of the e-Commerce site for Room Service Vintage. This was important because it defined the way the user would experience the site.

The Development

With the thumbnail sketches converted to lo-fi wireframes, the prototype was created for usability testing.

Usability Test & Iterations

After reviewing and analyzing user test results and feedback, below are the observations found with the iterations made within the site:

1. Users wanted a “continue shopping” button in the cart page so that they have the ability to do more shopping before checking out.

2. Users wanted discount ads to be more visible so they could get the discounts before checkout.

3. Testers wanted a tracking feature of shipping / delivery.

Next Steps

Working on this project I learned how Room Service Vintage really sticks to their brand in all aspects of their store. If given more time, I would work on building out the future items that users wanted to see such as:

• Finish building out the mobile version of the e-commerce site.

• Incorporate Live Chat button capability.

• Add more payment options such as PayPal onto the site.

Takeaways

Overall, I was happy with the website, as this was the first time I actually built and designed a website from beginning to end.  It was nice to see my design grow by incorporating user testing feedback into the design. I would love to work with Room Service Vintage in the future to see them incorporate e-Commerce into their existing website so they can have an edge in their unique brand.