About The School of Life

Founded in 2008, by philosopher Alain de Botton and other educators. The School of Life helps people develop their self-knowledge and emotional intelligence all around the world. Their lessons can take shape in a number of ways, such as books, workshops and a popular YouTube channel with over 4.5 million subscribers.

How can we help them?

How can we add to their e-commerce experience?

At first glance

The School of Life comes across really “together”, with a consistent branding and eye-catching visuals. Usually a colourful but minimal approach. We as a group questioned if they really needed our help based on our first impressions.

HOWEVER…

Once we tested the current website with a group of users the overall feedback pointed to a different reality. What looked attractive from the outside was extremely complex and convuluted to navigate and find

and the results pointed to a different reality…

APPROACH

1. Using research methods, such as usability testing, card sorting and user interview to discover website pain points and to understand the users’ motive to seek The School of Life content, services and products

2. Surveying and talking to SMEs in order to validate and quantify first stage of research

3. Based on user behaviour pattern define personas and scenarios that they would interact with the website

4. Research techniques were implemented in the first stage of the project. The goal was to pain point current website that are playing a toll on the overall experience. features that are not working to its best potential was implemented in order to clarify current website aspects that are letting the e-commerce experience down

APPROACH

A research was implemented in order to clarify which aspects of the website were impacting the e-commerce experience. Based on it’s findings, ideation, prototyping and usability testings were put into place to validate the changes.

based on the research findings.

and usability testing were put into place.

implemented

We asked users to perform tasks, such as book a workshop on the current website and organise 50 products into existing or new categories in a way that made sense to them.

The goal was to discover pain points related to user flow and information architecture, that are negatively impacting the online shopping experience.

USABILITY TESTING findings

• Frustrated by the lack of search bar at the top navigation

• Found filters vague and not helpful

• Felt disengaged with copy heavy product description

• Didn’t agree with certain products website location

“It looks pretty but is hard to find specific services and products” – User

CARD Sorting findings

• Strayed from current categories and created new ones

• Felt mislead by certain images and descriptions

• Skeptical about certain products, felt like pseudo-psychology

• Didn’t subcategorise products based on current filters

“How can this ceramic help my self-knowledge?” – User

After examining the website functionality, we had a candid conversation about self-knowledge, mindfulness and fulfilment with a group of users.

The goal was to understand how do they prefer to engage and learn from such topics and apply the findings into the website to guarantee a more meaningful experience.

DEFININE

Validating first stage of research findings

SMEs and learning

Could these behaviour traits be personas?
It was time to validate it through SMEs and Surveys.

Surveying and confirming

86 surveyees

PERSONAS

Delving into Andrew and Janes’ self-knowledge journey

Value Proposition Canvas

Understanding their pains and gains when interacting with The School of Life services and products

POSSIBLE FEATURES

Based on research feedback and personas profiles

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