I’m Fe, a Product Designer with 12 years of experience as a Visual Designer chasing insights, crafting visuals and looking for opportunities☺
Who is the client?
The School of Life was founded in 2008 by philosopher Alain de Botton and other educators. It 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.
GLOBAL SCHOOL
with 10 branches around the world
PRODUCTS
Workshops, talks, therapies, books and a popular YouTube channel
MOTTO
Believe the journey to finding fulfilment begins with self-knowledge
How can we improve their
e-commerce experience?
At first glance the website lookED spot on
Consistent branding, eye-catching visuals with their colourful yet minimal signature look. Our first impression was so striking, that it made us question at the beginning if the client actually needed help moving forward.
HOWEVER once we tested it…
The overall feedback we got from users pointed to a different reality. A reality where even though the website looks modern and approachable, the navigation is convoluted and the flow is not intuitive.
Research Methodologies:
• Usability Testing
• Card Sorting
Participants:
10 users in total and half of them were aware of the brand before the tests
Goal:
Identify the painpoints related to screen flow and information architecture
The Problem
Based on the TESTS findings we were able to establish our problem statement:
The School of Life e-commerce experience, although aesthetically pleasing, has a convoluted navigation and product description in place. This creates a negative impact on their user flow, product search and consequently on their online shopping transactions.
Time to understand how the users interact with the topics promoted by the school
We had a candid conversation about emotional intelligence, self-knowledge, mindfulness and fulfilment with a group of five users and two SMEs (Subject Matter Expert), one of them who works for The School of Life.
We also ran a survey to quantify our findings and validate patterns that were brought to light during the user interview stage.
Research Methodologies:
User Interview
Participants:
7 users
Goal:
Understand how users prefer to engage and learn from such topics and apply the findings into the website to guarantee a more meaningful experience
Research Methodologies:
Surveys
Participants:
89 users
Goal:
Quantify and validate patterns that were brought to light during the user interview stage
### Key TAKEAWAYS
* Majority wants to gain more self-knowledge (79.5%)
* Seeker Types:
Reactives (221 counts)
Proactives (49 counts)
* Learning preference:
Visual (69.7%)
Auditory (37.8%)
Kinesthetic ( 42.4%)
Key TAKEAWAYS
- Majority wants to gain more self-knowledge (79.5%)
- Seeker Types: Reactives (221 counts) Proactives (49 counts)
- Learning preference: Visual (69.7%) Auditory (37.8%) Kinesthetic ( 42.4%)
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.
Key TAKEAWAYS
- Confirmed Reactive and Proactive personas
- Added the Spontaneous persona to the mix
- Website could be better
- TSOL could be more flexible and accessible
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
Home
Before
After
Using a few research methods, we tested the current website with users. The goal was to discover which aspects of it are taking a toll on the e-commerce experience.
Researching the website and its users in order to discover current pain points that are taking a toll on the overall experience
the users needs