Mainstream

Final Step of IDD

Alyssa Taylor

Duquesne University

To summarize, the goal of Mainstream is to create an interface design that allows users to invite friends to their in-store shopping experience. Throughout conducted research, it was concluded that users who shop in-store often like to hear opinions of their closest companions compared to in-store sales associates. Mainstream is an application that will allow users to gain their closest companions opinion’s on clothing right in their fitting room. They will be able to share an image of their outfit, send to a friend or group message, and read opinions of what they have to say. They can gain insight of how their respondents respond within the message, or see how they respond with their actions of the photo in the group message. These actions consist of (“like, love, dislike, hate, new outfit, buy now”). These images will pop up within the group message when a respondent in the group messages responds with one. In addition, the user who sends the picture immediately has all product details on their phone. The camera automatically detects what product it is, lists its price, colors available, sizes, etc. This gives the users more insight of the different colors there are, but also allows the invited users to see what store these products can be located at.

Mainstream functions:

The user is taken into the main screen of the interface. The user is asked to login with a username and password. Upon this, they are able to type in what store they are shopping in. If location services are enabled on the user’s phone, it will automatically detect the user’s store location. Once the location is detected, the user is welcomed into the store page. They are able to browse this page to see products that they may like to try on. This page serves as an inspiration page along their shopping journey if they choose to use it. After the user is welcomed, they start their shopping process. The user proceeds to the fitting room, but is very indecisive about whether or not they like the product on their body. The user now has the opportunity to take a picture of their outfit and send to companions of their choice. They have many options within the camera. Flash is available if needed, and frontal and regular camera can be initiated depending on what the user needs to take a picture of.

After taking the perfect picture, the user then sends to a friends or friends on the message platform. In this group message, within the application, the friends can chat about the product, or refer to quick icons that will get their message across. These are icons that symbolize feelings from dislike to love. Within this quick chat, the shopper/user is able to gain insight about whether or not the product is the right choice. In addition, the product information is immediately sent with the picture that the user has taken. This allows the invited friends to look at what store the user is in, other sizes, product details. With this information, they can give better opinions about product and even have the direct link at their house if they would like to order clothing similar to the specific item.

If the shopper chooses not to go through with the purchase, they do have the opportunity to save to their history/favorites. This is within the navigation system, and is specified according to store location. They can reference this favorite/history platform at anytime to see the saved photo of the product on their body and also the product info listed on the store’s website. From both the messages and history/favorites platform, the user always has the option to add the item to their bag.

Once the shopper concludes their bag from the fitting room, the user has the option to check out from the fitting room or in the check out line of the store. If they choose to pick the fitting room option, a sales associate working in the fitting room will check out the user with a generate bar code that was generated after the user had added the items to the bag.

Usability Report

Users for the usability summary report were asked to complete task. The tasks included:

  1. User #1: Entering the store, checking in the appropriate store, check-into a fitting room to send a photo wearing a product to a desired person, add the product sent to the desired person for opinion to “My Favorites” tab.
  2. User #2: Browse history/favorites section, find white tank top that is located under Macy’s history, review the product details on Macy’s browser, go back to favorite sections and add to bag. Upon this review bag and proceed to checkout.

User #1 Review:

User was able to promptly find where they can check into store. They chose to type a store name and found the appropriate button to proceed. User proceeded to welcome page, but tried to choose product images from the welcome page. Although the welcome page is to give inspiration to shoppers before their physical shopping in stores, it somewhat distracted the user from approaching the main task. Following this, the user found the correct icon on the navigation bar to proceed to fitting room. The user chose the correct option “Enter Fitting Room” in order to take a picture. Upon this the user is presented automated text messages of how a user would send a message. With these messages the user must find a prompt in order to add the product picture into the “Favorites” tab. The user struggles with this, as they are looking for certain buttons that may prompt this. After a few seconds, the user the heart/plus icon that enables the user to add into the favorites tab. From here, the user reaches it intended final destination page.

Many considerations were taken during the usability testing. A major concern is visualizing in a better way in which the user can add the sent photo to their “Favorites” underneath he messaging platform. Users tend to think that they have to go back in order to get back to the initial action they wanted to make. The path Mainstream is trying to take was inspired by Iphone’s newest IOS update. The update allows users to select any certain message within their inbox and react to it in a certain way. The user can “like”, “dislike”, “love”, “haha”, or “question” the message with icon prompts. This is a feature that Mainstream would like to feature within it messaging platform in order to allow the user to complete tasks while they are able to hold conversations about the product that they had sent.

Recommendations would be to make another screen that prompts the user to perform these actions outside of the messaging platform. This may be an easy way to resolve user’s confusion of whether or not they are reacting with icons, or performing tasks such as “Add to Bag” or “Add to Favorites” through the messenger platform.

User #2 Review:

Upon checking in Mainstream, within seconds the user was able to find the “Favorites/History” button on the bottom navigation system. Their next task was to review the product details about the product before adding it to “Bag”. Although “Product Info” was located underneath the product picture, the user tried to review product details by clicking the product picture instead. After no response, the user found the correct button labeled “Product Info” and proceeded from there. The user was able to read the product info, and knew to proceed back to the Favorite’s page in order to add the product to bag. The user finished the task on the “Bag” page where they were able to look at quantity specifications, sizes, price, etc.

Recommendations would be to initiate buttons on the product picture. This may be due to hierarchy within the user interface design. Users may be more drawn to the pictures that are very colorful, which may conclude why they are so drawn to clicking the product for more information on it. An option would be to enable product details to pop up upon clicking the picture in a pop-up box versus taking the user to another page. This way the user would be able to exit after they are done reading the product info and simply add the product to the bag.

Within this project, I learned that users react more immediately to prompts that allow them to click, type, check, etc. In addition, I learned that users attention are grabber more by bigger details over smaller details. If there is a function that is more relevant over another, it must be executed with a bigger or more colorful button. Overall, the purpose of Mainstream is to enhance the shopper’s in-store shopping experience. Mainstream is intended as an application for the shopper to interact with companions that cannot shop with them. Mainstream can also serve as a history for the user to refer to when they would like to go back to the store to make a purchase they didn’t end up making. The user also has the option to share their past history with friends at any time, as the data is saved under their “Favorites/History”. Product details from the store’s website are always sent with the product that is worn on the user in the original picture sent.