The Curtain Company

The Curtain Company is a window treatment, drapery hardware, and fabric company that follows a B2C and B2B business model.

Ecommerce website

CASE STUDY

Project Overview

Objective

The company wishes to undergo a complete rebranding cycle to enhance its online presence by creating a customer-centric solution. It wants to be a one-stop interior design destination for custom and ready-made curtains as well as other window treatments.

My Role & Responsibilities

My Role: Design Team Lead, This is my first project in which I am leading both UX and UI Design, my responsibilities included: Requirement gathering, Stakeholder interview, affinity mapping, competitor analysis, user personas, user stories.

Team

Team consists of 5 members - 3 UX designers and 2 UI Designers

Duration

Phase 1: 4 Weeks (Oct - Nov 21)

Phase 2: 10 Weeks Jan 22 - Ongoing

Tools Used

Figma - For design, IA, flows & prototype

Notion - For team management

Google Sheets - For tracking progress

Zoom - For communication

FigJam - For Affinity Mapping

Challenges

The project presented several challenges for us as it had numerous key aspects to be taken care of. We approached it by carrying out an extensive research process for the discovery phase. The main challenges are listed below:

Solutions: Phase 1

The project, The Curtain Company gave our team the freedom to explore different strands to come up with a set of solutions for the various challenges listed above.

Competitor Analysis: It gave insight into recent trends and what other businesses are doing in similar fields.

User Persona: It helped in identifying the potential user types so that the design is more user-centric and benifits the user.

Module Identification: It clearified different aspects of functionalities required for better user experience.

User Stories: It helped in understanding the potential user and its goals, around which the designing will be curated.

User Flows: It helped us understand how a potential user will navigate through a website to achieve their goal.

Design Approach: Agile UX design - The 6D process

As we are creating this project from scratch, we have chosen the 6D process as the approach to design this project because this process is very iterative and the outcomes from different iterations can be evaluated, and priorities can be adjusted accordingly.

Stage 1

Discover

In this step, the goal is to collect as many insights as possible about the following:

1. The company’s direct and indirect competitors.

2. The user who is gonna use this platform

3. Business goals and technical possibilities

What we will gonna do in this stage?

1. Stakeholder Interview

2. Competitor Analysis

Stakeholder Interview

To understand the requirements, pain points, and goals, we drafted a list of questions related to business, design, and development.

After two sessions with the stakeholders, we got enough insights to kickstart the project.

Affinity Mapping: Mapping the responses

Brand

Target Audience

Competitors

And more..

Identifying the feature list for competitor analysis

While researching and identifying the list of features for the competitor analysis, we have found an article by WebAlive - 72 Must-Have Features for Ecommerce Website, we made a checklist out of it and started analyzing the prospects based on our key points and the checklist.

WebAlive - 72 Must-Have Features for Ecommerce Website

Competitor Analysis

As we are creating this website from scratch, the first thing we want to know is what the competitors are doing, we have identified 7 competitors in the stakeholder interview: The Shade Store, Smith & Noble, Ralph Lauren Home, St Frank, Serena & Lily, Williams Sonoma Home, and Blinds Direct UK.

High Level output

Rank

Note

Discovery plans for phase 2: We are planning a survey that will be sent to people in the NYC region to understand the user base.

Stage 2

Define

In this step, the goal is to collect as many insights as possible about the following:

1. The company’s direct and indirect competitors.

2. The user who is gonna use this platform

3. Business goals and technical possibilities

What we will gonna do in this stage?

1. User Stories

2. User Persona (Preliminary)

User Personas

Although the user research has not been done yet, but from stakeholders' interviews, we found a total of three common users who gonna use the product. These personas will be used to write the user stories and flows, in phase 2 we are planning an user research that will help us understand the user base.

Persona 1: Represent the group of professional women between the age of 28-36 who is independent and wants to do a thing on their terms.

Persona 2: Represent the group of women between the age of 40-50 who are well established, and wants to have a comfortable life with their loved ones.

Persona 3: Represent a group of design professional, who wants a reliable source to provide them with all the necessary products at ease for their business.