Example Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge & Selection    Storytelling is the interactive art of using words and actions to reveal the elements and images of a  story while encouraging the listener’s imagination. Stories are important because they are accounts of  specific events, not general statements and framed around real people and their lives. They provide us  with concrete details that help us imagine solutions to particular problems. I am a member of my  organization’s online shopping department and I assigned with the project of Total redesign of Online  shopping by Chief Growth Officer (CGO) and my role was Lead UXUI Designer. I started working with  design thinking as it is a great way to solve problems through creativity.     Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to  integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business  success. Thinking outside of the box can provide an innovative solution to a sticky problem. However,  thinking outside of the box can be a real challenge as we naturally develop patterns of thinking that are  modeled on the repetitive activities and commonly accessed knowledge we surround ourselves with.    A mindset is a person’s way of thinking and their opinions. A designer should have these mindsets to  reach the depth of a problem. These mindsets and methods are from studies done by Purdue

University.

Application    I have a story about using storytelling. I started the project by gathering as much user data as possible —  Personas, Customer Journeys, Empathy Maps, Honest Feedback, and Analytics. I paid special attention  to needs, wants, and jobs to be done. According to Honest Feedback and Analytics, users were  struggling to find products, frustrated with an unresponsive site, and turned off by outdated branding. It  was clear that we needed to update branding, and design a responsive website. But the most critical

problem to solve was… How might we help shoppers find products?     I like to start ideation with a hypothesis, it keeps the team focused and provides testing KPI’s (Key  Performance Indicators). Here is our hypothesis:  We believe that improving the header will help shoppers find products faster and easier. We will know  this is true when we see an increase in the use of the header and number of purchases. A reduction of  clicks from header-to-purchase will also support our assumption.    We also conducted a heuristic evaluation of the header, studied competitors, best-in-class examples,  and sketched plenty of flows and wireframes.  I started by updating the branding, using Adobe  Illustrator for iconography. I then created a hi fidelity prototype using Adobe XD. XD allowed me to  share a clickable prototype with the team, a video of the proposed experience with management, and  collect feedback in real time. Once the prototype was approved, XD made handing off design specs,  assets, and initial code a breeze.     We went straight to live A/B testing — A (control) being the current version of the website with existing  header, and B (treatment) being the same website with our proposed header. After two weeks of  testing our hypothesis was validated. First of all, the proposed header did not hurt sales — On the  contrary, sales increased by double digits. Secondly, the number of purchases originated in the header  also increased significantly. Last but not least, header-to-purchase clicks decrease slightly.    Insight & Approach    Hence, Design Thinking is essentially a problem-solving approach specific to design, which involves  assessing known aspects of a problem and identifying the more ambiguous or peripheral factors that  contribute to the conditions of a problem. This contrasts with a more scientific approach where the  concrete and known aspects are tested in order to arrive at a solution. Design Thinking is an iterative  process in which knowledge is constantly being questioned and acquired so it can help us redefine a  problem in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly  apparent with our initial level of understanding.     Design Thinking is often referred to as ‘outside the box thinking’, as designers are attempting to  develop new ways of thinking that do not abide by the dominant or more common problem-solving  methods – just like artists do. At the heart of Design Thinking is the intention to improve products by  analyzing how users interact with them and investigating the conditions in which they operate. Design  Thinking offers us a means of digging that bit deeper to uncover ways of improving user experiences.     I often use Lean UX principles and Design Sprints with my Design Thinking process — The design process  is not a one size fits all thing. After all, you’re a creative problem solver with unique thoughts and ideas.  Don’t work for the process, make the process work for you!

