About the project
Pierre Frey is a pioneer in creating, editing, and manufacturing custom-made furnishing and luxury interior fabrics. The brand's collections mix materials and motifs that are united in harmonious colors and the brand are much appreciated for its boldness and high standards. As part of the development of the Maison Pierre Frey, the brand chose DISKO agency for the complete redesign and relaunch of their existing platform. The brand wanted to enhance the brand’s know-how and expertise to offer a global and premium brand experience. The aim of this reshape was to revisit the entire platform, inspire professionals and contribute to their creative process. Below, I'll explain the general process I advocated and show some of the features I designed.
Contribution : UX Designer
I was brought on board to work closely with strategists and the project manager on research, structure, design, and implementation. My key responsibilities were to :
- Prepare and participate in research sessions
- Structure the process with the Lead UX designer and advocate it towards the final delivery
- Prepare and conduct co-creation workshops + design activities with stakeholders
- Responsible of crafting all UX assets, wireframes & prototype
- Plan and facilitate review and test sessions
The problem
The platform allows leading interior designers and architecture studios to explore fabrics, furnitures, and other equipment and contact the company or find a dealer. However, the website wasn’t responding to their needs of discovering, saving new products and getting specific information resulting in confusion during product research and selection. Their collaborators were struggling to use the platform due to ineffective methods of classification, visualization and an outdated look&feel.
Design challenge
User research
To develop a better understanding of the current situation, we wanted to meet and discuss with all stakeholders about their experiences and challenges with the current system. It was important at this step to build a solid relationship with the stakeholders so they could share their thoughts. In collaboration with the consulting team, I conducted interviews with experts as well as intercept survey in-showroom to dive in Pierre Frey’s universe and ask collaborators about their experience. We also wanted to analyze all different stages of the sales process and identify potential entry points for a digital product.
At this step, I needed to put myself in user's shoes to validate our first assumptions. This time, I wanted to avoid any biased judgment by meeting customers (interior architects, designers and private client) that's why I planned usability testing so we could understand how easy users it was for users to perform some tasks and identify the main pain points. Through this exercise, we were able to synthesize significant data to pencil out the main design challenges.
The solution
The new platform was designed to enable customers to easily discover, select products, save and share their interior design projects. The platform would enhance professional's creative process and improves communication between the brand and customers.
- The mood board tool helps customers create, manage and share their furnishing project by saving product products into their account.
- The website enables professional customers to easily order product samples online.
- The platform allows users scheduling on-site appointments with experts to get tailored advices in showrooms.
Design and Test
As soon as we validated the problem and identify opportunities, my duty was to facilitate co-creation workshops with stakeholders and the project manager. We performed various design exercises (card sorting, lightning demo, simple storyboard, crazy 8's) so we could craft design concepts that address user needs and test our ideas. Later on, I would design and polish the prototype considering experts and users feedbacks.
We wanted the new platform to be considered as an inexhaustible source of inspiration, so I choose to declutter and clean the interface to strenghen the brand content. The objective in organizing institutional content was to create emotion and convey the brand’s heritage by highlighting notable projects. The tools used by the experts in showrooms deeply inspired me and my goals was to relay this experience through the product.
1. User journey & sitemap
Looking at the outcomes, users were having a hard time finding specific products and even bookmark the ones they found due to usability and information architecture issues.
We also built a System Requirement Chart and prioritized each level of importance to prioritize features. Once we validated navigation principles we were then able to start working on the interface itself which allowed me to lead the design of the prototype.
2. Navigation menu
Before starting crafting the interface, I was struck by the number of categories used both in the menu and product filters. It was crucial to work on hierarchical taxonomy, redefine categories with overcomplicated terms used into more simple ones. The content inventory and card sorting session allowed me to define how we structure and label content across the platform in a way that will make sense to the users.
3. Search engine
I discovered that both experts and customers would always want to go straight for the search engine to navigate where they wanted to go. During workshops, we found out ways to simplify and make the solution intuitive and straightforward. The chosen solution we would implement would also allow Pierre Frey analyzing, weighting content/product, adding tag and testing suggestions depending on user researches.
4. Mood board tool
The main objective of the project remains to enhance the creative process and help project definition by inspiring professionals. I participated in contextual inquiry with professionals to fully understand how they interact daily and cooperate with Pierre Frey. It was pertinent to understand their full working process so Pierre Frey can facilitate their collaborators’ work.
To avoid overloaded screens and reduce cognitive load, we decided to separate each step to be completed. This would allow us to temporarily unclog the screens so that the user can focus on the task to be performed. I assessed and tested three design solutions and decided to developp a step-by-step solution based on data collected. The overlay modal allows users to have quick access to this tool and switch to another page when needed.
- Simplicity: Help people build, save and easily share their projects.
- Contribution: The user would also have the ability to extract all product information to speed up the creation of their project presentation.
- Request: Giving the user the possibility to configure and add a product to their basket through the mood board tool.
5. Product list & single page
Within the product list page, we had to provide specific ways to get to the product that people seek. Looking at the main use-cases, we implemented tailored filters and other properties such as brand sorting, card view, popularity and news to facilitate discovery. We also had to take into consideration the different ways a user would get to this page, so the filters would be contextual. I was inspired by the physical product specifications in the showroom, I wanted to recreate this experience on product roll over and include available Colors. Regarding the product single page, I rated with users and experts on a scale from 0 to 5 what their biggest concerns are :
- Visualize, configure product while showing it in a wider scene
- Find technical information, specifications, and benefits (incl. calculator and stock availability).
- Read Infos from the Artist and Pierre Frey on the specific product or collection.
- Discover more similar products and other ones within the same collection.
- Facilitate contact with the brand.
