Packed
Issue
Concept
Duration
Packed was created through research, ideation and evaluative user testing in ten weeks with the mentorship of Professor Byeong Cheol Hwang at SCAD.
With the continual rise of e-commerce, consumerism is sustaining the exponentially growing issue of extreme packaging waste. Especially in industries like online fast fashion, this packaging waste highly frustrates consumers while dangerously threatens
the planet.
Packed is a plug-in service that connects shoppers with others buying from the same online fashion brands, delivering to the same area.
Deliverables
Vision Video , Process Book , Prototype
Vision Video
Team
My Role
Awards
Generative research
Interview & user testing facilitating
Data collection & analysis
Wireframing & prototyping
Personas & user journey maps
Vision video
Silver - Apps
Silver - Digital Tools and Utilities
Silver - UX, Interface & Navigation
Bronze - Interactive Design 2020
Creative Communication Awards:
User Experience Design - Award
UI & UX Design - Award
SECONDARY RESEARCH
165 billion packages are shipped in the US each year, with the cardboard used roughly equating to more than 1 billion trees. With the rise of online retail (which grew by 16% last year in the US, while all retail rose 3.8%) according to Forbes.com, and the love for speed and convenience by the consumers, the problem of packaging waste just keeps growing.
forbes.com
68% of buyers strongly agree they are more conscious of packing material use that they were 5 years ago.
In a poll conducted by Harris
Users tagging companies on social media to show the ridiculous excessive amount of packaging with their order.
47% of buyers consider extra packaging to be wasteful.
In a poll conducted by Harris
PRIMARY RESEARCH - 124 survey responses
Question: Do you shop online?
96.8%
stated that they shopped online.
Question: How often do you shop online?
61.3%
stated that they shopped online either once a month or several times in a month.
With these quantitative data, we wanted to know what was most important to the users and what industries we should tackle in our design solution and so we asked users...
Question: What do you order online?
Question: What is important to you when ordering an item to be shipped to you?
We invited users in our target age range with varying shopping habits to an interview to find out in-depth their biggest concerns and emotions throughout their online purchase journey.
Our interviewees repeatedly told us that especially with fast fashion, they did not care when the package arrives as long as it arrives in the near future (less than a month), especially since expedite shipping usually cost more.
AFFINITY MAPPING
Each data point gathered in the research phase was written onto a yellow sticky note, and placed randomly onto a wall to remove bias of the data source. After which, we gathered them into different groups based on affinity of the data points.
Yellow sticky notes with a greater affinity was placed into bigger groups summarized by a blue sticky note.
Each blue sticky note is in return placed together to form a pink sticky note, from these we gathered our key insights.
Key insights developed into design opportunities, where we asked How Might We...
CONCEPT INSPIRATION
People shop online often, especially college students.
At the same time, there is an increase in concern over the environmental impact of their online shopping habits, but they do not care enough to not be tempted by the convenience of online retail.
So we started to ask ourselves, is there a way to reduce the environmental impact of shopping habits with minimal effort?
IDEATION
We needed a solution that could help reduce the environmental impact of online fast fashion shipping. It needed to:
Remain convenient, minimal effort
At no extra cost
Benefit the customers, business and
environment at the same time.
How might we not destroy the planet in the expense of shopping habits, while not disrupting the pleasurable experience of online consumption?
Packed will be a plug-in service that connects shoppers with others buying from the same online fashion brands, delivering to the same area.
PROTOTYPING & USER TESTING
With our design direction decided, we started to create paper prototype and user tested in the early stages to ensure the best usability for our users.
The paper interfaces were placed in a paper phone frame and used to micmic animations in the preliminary user testing.
Key insights of this preliminary user testing included:
-
Both users understood the process and noted that it was easy to follow.
-
Icons were misleading and a short tour of the Interface would help minimise confusion.
-
Users appreciate it when they know the context behind their actions– what the service was doing exactly at each point, including progress notifications and breakdown of statistics.
Using these insights, we altered our interface to minimise confusion and understood that the users appreciated whenever the interface was transparent with what was happening at the backends and how they were making an impact while using the service.
MID - FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
After mid-fidelity prototypes, we created and tested our interfaces again with Figma.
Expert Reviews were done with UX Design seniors at SCAD to learn from their experiences (such as common interface confusions with users) and gather design advice. With expert review insights we were able to change our designs to be more user friendly.
After
Before
Visual image for location radius
Addition of pictures from brands
Addition of profile on top right
After several iterations with the help of user testing insights we finalized our interfaces.
FINAL CONCEPT AND HIGH - FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Users will be linked to each brand's website to purchase their orders and Packed will handle the logistics and shipping, allowing the customer and business to benefit at the same time.
For more details and information, please refer to the process book.