E-Commerce Website & Product Editor Redesign
Society6
Society6 is an expansive artwork marketplace that empowers independent artists to sell their work to a global audience.
Project
This project included a full web redesign and Shopify replatform for their online marketplace and artist account experience.
Timeline
November 2023 - March 2024 (5 months)
My Role
UX/UI Designer
My Impact
Design: Led the remainder of the website redesign and artist account experience with high-fidelity mocks and prototypes using research-driven design thinking. Created responsive designs for both desktop and mobile.
Research: Created interactive prototypes for 60-minute moderated interviews held virtually over Google Meet. Collaborated with the team in producing a script for each interview.
Communication: Presented designs weekly to internal and external stakeholders. Defended design decisions, implemented feedback, and collaborated with engineers for successful file handoff.
Challenge
How might we enhance Society6’s digital experience to be more intuitive for their sellers and more engaging for users looking to buy art? How can we move the Society6 experience upmarket?
Background
Entering a project midway through can present a unique set of challenges. By the time I was asked to join, the team had already established a strategy and design direction for the new website. Many of the main pages were already mocked up and approved by the client. However, there were a few important remaining pages left to design and all of the artist account experience that still needed quite a bit of work.
I was tasked with fulfilling the vision that my team before me created. This included familiarizing myself with research insights, a design library, our market strategy, and gaining the trust of our client in continuing to present work at the caliber set before me.
Strategy
Our approach in redesigning the website was driven by market research, user testing, and a better understanding the Society6 audience. Every data-driven design decision was aimed at a richer visual experience and stronger messaging of the brand values and mission. Our strategy emphasized principles of inclusivity, creativity, and quality within the web experience. We focused on enhancements such as an improved selling experience for artists, easier product discovery, increasing customer loyalty through subscriptions and programs, and improved usability for merchandising.
An Improved Account Experience
Empowering artists to sell their art to a worldwide audience is a critical part of the company mission. The foundation of that mission rests upon an efficient, easy, and effective account experience. Improvements to the UI/UX make it easy for artists to keep track of their orders, manage payments, keep personal information up to date, and more. Users can easily manage their account by navigating through a series of tabs organized at the top of the UI and make edits or review details as needed.
Setting Up Your Shop
We made it easier for users to set up their shop by increasing guidance during onboarding and exposing users to resources and tips in the UI. This provides education on how to best utilize the platform, inspiration on how other artists are setting up their shops, and ensures their storefront is complete so they can handle transactions successfully.
Up until this point everything we’ve design had a mobile counterpart. However, as we get deeper into the artist studio interfaces, the support for mobile starts to drop off for certain features. The challenge for myself revolved around providing sufficient feedback and education so that the user can anticipate this drop off. While we can’t support every feature across all devices we can at least provide the appropriate cues to inform the user on why what they’re looking for might be missing and how to access that feature on desktop.
Uploading Designs
In the previous experience, uploading artwork was tedious and confusing. Users struggled with file requirements and lacked understanding in how to categorize their file for optimal product discovery. The redesigned experience breaks down each step through a simple UI and guides the user on best practices as they upload their work.
Creating Art Products: Designing the Print-On-Demand Editor
One of the most challenging and rewarding parts of this project was the redesign of the product editor. This is what empowers artist to take their artwork from a digital file and bring it into real-life products that they can sell to their customers. Apart from creating an intuitive design that was simple and easy to use we needed a solution that was also scalable. Sellers can print their art on anything from a simple canvas to a decorative pillow and the editor needs to be able to handle each of those products with ease.
Managing Shop Products
Finally, we need to bring everything together in one place where it’s easy to audit and manage shop items. Sellers need to be able to quickly understand high level metrics such as the number of products per design, whether a product is live, and how it’s categorized. We needed to account for multiple incomplete states where a design is missing a crucial piece of information, image, or may not be active but isn’t deleted.
User Testing & Research Objectives
Once high fidelity mocks for the artist studio experience were finalized our team facilitated six interviews to observe how users were interacting with the designs. This qualitative research method takes a more anthropological approach that allows us to listen, clarify assumptions, and uncover opportunities to create a more seamless experience. We sought to have a better understanding of user behavior and generate insights on how we can continue making iterative design decisions and updates prior to handoff.
Research Details
Method
6 user interviews
moderated task-based testing
Technical Specifications
60 minute virtual sessions
held using Google Meet
Participants
2 Society6 power users (5+ years selling on the platform)
2 Society6 sellers who also sell on other platforms
2 artists who solely sell on other platforms
Structure
Prototypes were created for each portion of the artist studio (artist account, setting up your storefront, uploading files, product editor, etc.). Participants used the prototypes to navigate through the product, sharing thoughts and answering questions by the moderator along the way.
Research Findings
Results from the interviews were overwhelmingly positive. Users were able to successfully navigate throughout the new pages and complete their tasks. They were able to clearly describe where they were in the product and accurately predicted where they might go next (through the tasks). Many of them expressed excitement at the redesigned UI and said that the new flows allowed them to achieve their goals while removing complexity. A few other high level insights from the interviews include:
100% of users mentioned preferring to access the artist studio from a desktop rather than a phone. This confirmed our expectations when accounting for responsive design.
Completely new users may need support around terminology and language (terms like affiliate, wholesale, storefront, etc.). This is a normal part of user education as a new user familiarizes oneself with a product and can be addressed through supportive body copy within the page.
Participants unanimously expressed their enthusiasm for the new look and feel of the product.
Reflection & Learnings
Key Learnings
A prototype is worth a thousand words: sometimes when trying to convey complicated functionality, showing is better than telling. The prototypes we built brought the mocks to life. They were crucial in communicating the functionality of certain features and flows.
Success is found in collaboration and teamwork: staying communicative, humble, and curious when admitting things you don’t know or areas you have questions over its essential in building a strong team-minded framework.
This was such a unique and rewarding project because we were designing really complex and technical user flows but we needed it all to feel easy and seamless for the user. I’m so grateful to the Pattern team for allowing me to join this project. I’m also incredibly grateful to the Society6 team and their wonderful engineering partners for their endless patience and collaboration.