Improving Shopee Apps — UX Case Study
I was one of the people who was greatly helped by the existence of online shopping applications (e-commerce) like Shopee. I’m the type of person who doesn’t like having to come to the mall to shop for the product that I want. Honestly, I often shop at these applications.
By the way, some time ago I was looking for Kebaya for my mother. I have never bought a kebaya and I don’t know which kebaya suits my mother. I use Shopee Apps and then I thought maybe the application filtered out a feature that could help me and apparently I didn’t find a filter that can help me, finally I didn't buy kebaya.
I felt lost. I tried to find what’s wrong and also tried to create a solution for my query.
Declaring Assumptions
The first step is to declare your assumptions. Before diving into assumptions there needs to be a clear problem statement. I treated my challenge as the problem statement.
Problem Statement — Problem statements should follow a more structured format addressing the criteria below.
[Our service/product] was designed to achieve [these goals]. We
have observed that the product/service isn’t meeting [these goals],
which is causing [this adverse effect] to our business. How might we
improve [service/product] so that our customers are more successful based on [these measurable criteria]?
As this is hypothetical I can’t say I know the goals of the Shopee app, but I can take a good guess based on a quick google search and their press releases. The following is a problem statement on the Shopee app.
Shopee believes and providing customer online shopping with an accessible, easy, and enjoyable shopping experience through strong payment and fulfillment support. This is the vision Shopee aspires to deliver on the platform, every single day. The current Shopee application “has not” succeeded in achieving the goals that are easy shopping. How might we improve the Shopee app so that Shopee customers can buy products easily?
Proto-Personas — Once you have a clear problem statement it’s time to capture the audience you are focusing on. A Proto-Persona (or Ad-Hoc Persona) is a persona that is created using a project stakeholders' intuition and anecdotal evidence (“ad-hoc” meaning improvised or impromptu). proto-persona is different from a regular persona as it is purely based on assumptions which you will later validate. As I did not have access to the Shopee team, I make a persona based on my own personal assumptions and studies. Here are the proto-personas.
Hypotheses — With a prioritized list of assumptions in hand, now ready to move to the next step: testing your assumptions. To do that, transform each assumption statement into a format that is easier to test:
Generally, hypothesis statements use the format:
We believe [this statement is true].
We will know we’re [right/wrong] when we see the following feedback from the market: [qualitative feedback] and/or [quantitative feedback] and/or [key performance indicator change].
My Hypotheses — I believe that Shopee will help users discover anything with ease if the user can find the right product by adding an age filter.
Testing my assumptions
I then wanted to test these assumptions with real users by sending out a quick survey which got 5 respondents and 5 user interviews. From this, I got the following insights.
Key Insights
- 100% of respondents shop online at home.
- 80% of respondents shop using their smartphones.
- Users get their inspiration from people, Instagrams, and celebrities.
- Getting the right clothes is the most important factor when buying clothes online.
- Using the filter feature based on age to get recommendations for suitable clothes is the right thing and very helpful.
From this quick research, which only took a couple of days, I updated my proto-persona and re-prioritized my hypotheses based on the pain points that both would critically affect the business and users.
Solution
After talked to the users, we got really precious insights that crucial on the Shopee app. So here’s the solution for users:
Added “Age” Filters
These features make users easier to search for products based on age. So, when users are confused which product is suitable for him or people he wants to buy, users can use this feature as a reference :)
By the way, before I decided to use the design above. I actually made some reference UI designs for these features which I thought were more comfortable to use and beautiful in design-based on my assumption. But finally, I decided to use the design above because it’s in “accordance with the existing design system of the Shopee app”.
But interestingly, I found some design components in the filter feature have inconsistent like this:
I don’t know, the design was intentional or unintentional. I think consistency is so incredibly important in UI Design. What I mean is… I just want to show that I am a designer who’s not only able to create better Experiences and Interfaces but also a designer who’s able to think critically and solve the problems!
Also, How about Backend?
I do qualitative research to ensure how this feature works. Are
the sellers really understand about product that he sells? what kind of customers and how old customers are suitable to wear the clothes they sell? and here is the results:
Therefore, can be confirmed there are no problems with the solution that will be provided to the Backend app. Here is UI Design for sellers:
The solution added a field to select the age of the customers that’s suitable for the product it sells. I also validate this UI Design using the usability testing method with several people. Check out the High-fidelity InVision prototype here:
To measure the success of the design, I don’t use metrics that are too complex. I only measure the user’s satisfaction when using the design app.
The result, all respondents said that the design app was easy to use.
Conclusion
My anxiety and other users in finding suitable products for him and the people he will buy finally can be solved in the presence of the “age filter” feature in the Shopee app. Users are no longer confused when they want to buy a product for someone but lack a reference. The design results also show that the design app is easy to use.
As a UI/UX Designer, actually there are many things that I want to improve on the Shopee app and many innovations that I want to give to Shopee. I hope to join the Shopee design team :)
