What are we trying to accomplish?

CB2 takes pride in its partnership with artists around the world, creating styles that are curated to creatives. We were tasked with the goal to drive more traffic to CB2’s Collaboration page, where customers to find inspiration and shop collaborators of the month and select new styles.

The first crucial step of our research was to create comparative & competitive analysis to further better understand what is happening in stores similar to CB2.

We discovered that consumers generally spend more when there is some sort of promotion going on. West Elm had the most similar features to CB2 making it a close competitor compared to the higher-end stores such as Home Union and Design Within Reach which don’t offer discounted shipping rates or continuous promotions outside of sales.

Post-analysis, 24 participants helped us gain a better understanding of their relationship to furniture.

To our surprise, Google search was one of the most popular resources compared to social media & e-commerce platforms where consumers are currently shopping for their furniture. After crunching the numbers our data showed that 80% of our survey participants purchase furniture at an average of 1-2 times a year and usually based on need. 

Taking into account our survey data responses, we formulated 3 questions for 6 interviewees to help us gain better insight into the way they shop for furniture and identifying any pain points within their process.

Affinity Mapping with Interview Data.

Our extensive affinity mapping through user interviews allowed us to develop Lucas, our user persona.

Lucas’ line of work has always allowed him to work from the comfort of his home. He wants to elevate his home & office space with functional, unique pieces in order to feel inspired and productive.

Our ideation session composed of 12 participants provided insight on… ways we can help Lucas discover unique pieces of furniture that make his home space reflect his personality, confidence that he is finding the right fit when selecting pieces for his home to avoid the trial and error process of buying and returning, & we conversed about how we can bridge the gap between Lucas and creative professionals who share a love for thoughtful design.

We established four minimum viable products through this ideation:

In order to determine how to layout our MVPs, we created task flows that would help Lucas accomplish his goals.

Sketched Protoype & Testing

Low Fidelity Prototype & Testing

Taking into account our previous usability testing from the sketched prototypes, we integrated more labels defining sections, pages, and navigations.

High Fidelity Prototype

VIEW PROTOTYPE.

The CB2 e-commerce site has a white background for every page, but for the Collaborations landing page, I chose to make the visible screen’s background black to provide a showroom experience for the consumer.

Next Steps & Takeaways

• Ensuring every single frame is connected properly and every page’s functions fully work

• Build out Account Profile: Making an account allows user to save & reference back to Collaboration Room Builder projects

• Incorporating more effective & accessible navigation features like icons on the main page

• Expand on the content of the Collaboration Pairing Guide and how those results are generated

• Build fun, interactive pages for each CB2 Collaborator profile page

• Develop a schedule for the Collaborators Live Feed Q&A - can import into iCal

• Integrate social media platforms into the “Live Feed Q&A” - users can also watch from their IG/Twitter 

Working as a team allowed me to discover my strengths & weaknesses when it comes to following the UX process to deliver solutions that help people in the real world. Every single step was worked on together as a team, but we discussed what our individual thought processes were behind our contributions and our personal discoveries along the way. This project was exciting as it was a big challenge to redesign for a notable company when I had to consider competitors and making sure I am designing based on research, not bias.