Abby Wine

Research

Included Stakeholder Interview, Data Analysis, Competitive Analysis and Market Research, User Research.
Research helped us choose which sections of the existing website to migrate, which to eliminate and which to improve. We found the the tone of the website needed to change to more nurturing and mature in order to appeal to our target audience. Visuals were outdated, blog section was overfilled and marketing strategies seemed to be falling short. 

Explore

Included Sketches, Wire-framing, High Fidelity Prototypes, Rough drafts of Copy, Edits to existing content

In this step we put our findings in research to good use and created ideas and scaffolds of designs. Designs were created around the content rather than the other way around. We believe designing has to be done with the content already in mind, otherwise it's more decorations than design. 

Design

Included completing User Interface,  Visual Imagery, adding delightful interactions and pizzazz if you will. ​

We worked on creating an experience from the scaffolds and content already in place. In this step colors and pictures were added, mock-ups were generated and content was edited to be more than just a rough draft. 

Test

Putting all work so far to test with both users and stakeholders. 

We gathered a small sample reflecting our user group and asked for their feedback. We observed them navigating the product, noted their interactions and made adjustments to minimize pain points. Next we took their feedback to stakeholders to challenge assumptions and find suitable and profitable solutions.

Iterate

Rinse and repeat as needed! 

We went back to research, explore, design and test steps for a few sprints until the stakeholders and our small sample of end users were happy with the project.

Interviews

At the discovery phase of my project, I conducted user and stakeholder interviews in order to get a better understanding of the their relationship to wine and their expectations.

I chose this method of research as their target audience were rather personal and they'd have a better idea of the taste of the market. 

Stakeholder questions:

• Who is the target demographic?

• What would need to happen in order for you to deem this project successful?

• What are some websites and brands that you personally shop from? why is that?

• How do you choose what type of wine to take home?

• Imagine a friend recommends a wine to you, what makes you most likely to try that wine? 

User Interviews

• I interviewed 4-5 people. 

• I was curious about finding their shopping habits and how they choose a new wine so I'd be able to make sure our website was an adequate introduction for the wine. 

• For different people different aspects were important, some cared about the type of tastes the wine would offer, some simply liked trying friends suggestions. I found that most people go towards familiar wines compared to wines they don't know, also knowing that a wine was made with love and in smaller amounts made the wine seem more unique and thus more people were likely to want to try it. 

• Based on these insights I made the following changes:

  • I added more information about the types of wines and their taste profiles. 

  • I emphasized the role of sharing in wine for this brand 

  • I created more realistic bottle mockups to increase familiarity for the brand. 

User Testing

We tested the iterations of the designs by repeatedly seeking short bursts of feedback from people in our user group.

We aimed to see if the redesign did provide a better online presence for the brand, and if the values were more transparent and easily communicated through the current design.

Our testing methods included user interviews with a few sample questions, moderated run through of the interactive prototypes, some surveys and A/B testings.

We incorporated the feedback we received in each iteration of the design until the feedback was almost unanimously positive and reflected a tangible solution to the problem we set out to solve.

Post Project Thoughts

Since this was a start-up and the design team consisted of mostly me and an administrative assistant, I learned a lot about the ins and outs of an end to end project. This project was unfortunately cut short due to the pandemic hitting in early 2020. Due to this I never had access to metrics or other measures to calculate the success of the designs. 

Thank you to the team at Abbywine for this experience!