TIMELINE:

Approx. 80 Hours

TOOLS:

Figma, Whimsical, Notion,

MY ROLES:

End-to-end Product Designer

PROJECT TYPE:

Responsive web design

Project Background

Faye Daniel's unique and timeless jewelry has been a sensation at jewelry shows all over the world and is readily found at high-end jewelry retailers throughout North America. Faye Daniel wants to increase their online presence by showcasing their newest line of Jewelry. They hope that a new and improved showcase website can boost their exposure and rising popularity.

Challenge

In an age where people are beginning to value experiences more than physical items, it is important that the user experience on this website is second to none. Nothing can ever replace the physical feeling of trying on a perfect piece.

How might we be able to create an online experience that can be just as good as the the in-store experience?

Research Plan

Research Goals:
‍Understand general jewelry purchasing trends and how the internet affects them.
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Learn about current jewelry websites, see how they display items on their websites and analyze the types of UX that are present.
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Observe the way luxury brands engage with potential clients.
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Research Methods:
‍Competitive Analysis was split into two separate phases. The first phase analyzed UI (design) aspects of all the major jewelry designers. The top 4 sites were selected as part of research testing where we asked participants to rate the UI.
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The second round of competitive analysis was carried out by reviewing the sites of smaller boutique jewelry companies. I viewed these companies to be the competition, so I paid close attention to the user experience offered by these sites. This analysis provided a glimpse into the trends and methods used.

A Survey was conducted by setting up a general questionnaire to understand the basic trends of the jewelry market and how websites play a role in a potential customer's behaviors and habits.

2-3 short Interviews were conducted to gain a more detailed understanding of people's personal experiences and preferences when shopping for jewelry.

Survey Results

Phase 2 of the primary research was implemented via a survey. Using this method allowed me to get as close to actual clients as possible. Although the survey participants may have not been the target audience or potential clients, they provided me with a better understanding of what actual clients would prefer.

Guiding Design Principles

Upon the completion of user research, I came up with three principles that I used for my designs. Every section of every page should be able to align with these principles.
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1. Luxurious: The updated showcase site should always look luxurious and never cheap. A focus should be placed on color, and typography in order to achieve this goal.

2. Exclusivity/Uniqueness: All of Faye Daniel’s jewelry is unique. The design of the website should be able to showcase this uniqueness by placing an emphasis on imagery.

‍3. Storytelling: Each piece of Faye Daniel jewelry is designed around the stone. The showcase site should be able to communicate this to potential clients.

Persona Development

The personas created for Faye Daniel represent the two kinds of clients that focuses their business on. The information about these personas was provided by the stakeholders themselves. Coming up with a more specific persona type on my own proved to be difficult as I had not spoken to actual clients when doing research.

Isabelle enjoys owning high jewelry.

James wants to buy a gift for loved one.

Site Map

I created a site map of the pages included in the new showcase site. I based the pages off the UI requirements document as well as the stakeholder’s preferences. The final site map will be tested together with the rest of the product during the usability testing phase.

Site Map

High Jewelry Map

Prototype

This prototype was based on the main flow that users would take upon visiting the site. I ran into major issues when the stakeholder was unable to provide updated images for me to use on this project. This made designing the final product a bit of a challenge. After waiting over a week and a half for high quality-images, I decided to create a prototype using images available online. I went ahead and used stock images, as well as images from graff.com. I do not own these images and used them for mockup purposes only.

View Enlarged Prototype

Usability Testing

By the time I was up to the testing phase of this project, I was running a week and a half behind schedule. This gave me only enough time to test two participants. We decided to go ahead with the test anyway. The main goal of this round of testing was to ensure that the site met all three of the "Guiding Design Principles" stated above.
Given the minimum testing that was carried out, we did feel that we reached most of those requirements. The testers did feel that this site was luxurious and that it offered a unique product they were also impressed with the amount of transparency the site had and that they felt like they were getting one on one attention from a personal designer.

Next Steps

This project is far from complete and still needs a lot of work. I've gone ahead and compiled a list of everything that still needs to be taken care of.

‍Content- In order for the site to reach its full potential, Original content in the form of images, and videos must be provided to properly tell the story of Faye Daniel and let users see its full potential.

Design- Once the original content is available the rest of the pages of the site can be built.

Testing- Complete an additional round of user testing this time with more participants.

Iteration- Once the second version of the site is tested, iterations should be made based on user feedback.

Final Thoughts

Working directly with a stakeholder on this project taught me a few lessons about designing for clients. Firstly, I would make sure that all the relevant information is available to me before I start the project. In this case, the lack of images and just general information about the projects hindered my ability to design properly. This also caused me to miss deadlines which delayed the project.I also particularly enjoyed this project because the research enabled me to learn about the jewelry industry, which I did not know much about prior to this.

View More of My Work

Faye Daniel

Project Background

Challenge

Research Plan

Survey Results

Guiding Design Principles

Persona Development

Site Map

User Flow & Task Flows

Responsive Wireframes

UI Design

Prototype

Usability Testing

Next Steps

Final Thoughts