Track market value of entire luxury portfolio by getting real time data and pricing alerts all in one place.
Deliverables: User Research, Sketches, Low to High Fidelity Wireframes, Prototypes, Usability Testing
Timeline: 5 weeks, May - June 2022
Platform: Responsive Website
Role & Team: Product Designer & Researcher
Ara Jang & Naomi Cortez
(UX Designer & Researcher)
PROBLEM
Luxury resale platforms require proof of authenticity, pictures, and more just for people to get an idea of how much their luxury bags are worth and even then they are being vastly undervalued.
Current luxury resale process is a headache 🤯
“How might we enable users to easily find all relevant information regarding their luxury items in one place?”
Business and user goals
Upon understanding the problem at hand, I asked the client about their problem areas, what their goals were and any potential constraints, whether it be technological, time, or budget constraints. We asked for any resources on their target user and competitors to come up with the following:
User goals (MVPs):
Find resale value of luxury bag and add to dashboard/watchlist.
See total value of luxury items on the resale market.
Track the value of individual luxury items over time.
Business goals:
Prompt users to create an account in order to collect user data.
Redesign dashboard and product pages as the original design didn’t display information in a way that was in line with their vision (e.g. e-commerce platform vs fintech platform).
A future business goal to generate revenue is to build a feature for users to connect with resale platforms.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
There is no competition
Since there is no app like Luxyfund on the market, we each conducted competitive analysis on a resale platform and a stock portfolio. Robinhood and Fidelity are great platforms to analyze because a lot of data is presented in an easy to digest way.
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USER INTERVIEWS
80% of people did additional research
My interviewees were all luxury bag owners, familiar with resale platforms, and had a stock portfolio. During our affinity mapping session, it became clear that our users approached luxury resale very tactically.
Affinity Map Takeaways
IDEATION
Make information more accessible
Since the original designs looked like an e-commerce site, the ideas I came up with included different ways of portraying data, searching, and educating users. These ideations were based off of what users looked for in their own stock portfolios and
Dashboard view allows users to see a quick rundown on how the entire portfolio is doing.
Tab view gives users easy access to the items they own under each brand.
Search bar is easy, familiar, and gets users using the platform right away.
Business goal: prompt account creation after viewing x amount of items, gather customer data.
Educational Resources like blogs, comparison feature and daily tips are ways we can educate our users.
Lo-fi wireframes
Going forward with the sketches that best represented our users, I expanded on those ideas and came up with lo-fi wireframes (more mid-fi due to time constraint) to present to our stakeholders and software engineers.
Feedback from Stakeholders
1. Brand tabs in overview only works with minimal brands
In the future, Luxyfund will not just be constrained to bags and three brands but all luxury items and brands.
2. Get rid of table view
Too complicated/overwhelming for their users and wanted to use card view instead even though they initially said card view felt too much like an e-commerce store.
One major challenge I faced when presenting my design to the stakeholders was their push for card view. I advocated for table view mainly because of scaling and scan-ability reasons. If a user were to have an extensive portfolio, the card view wouldn’t be optimal for this information to be presented. With table view, information is displayed in a way that’s easier to summarize when looking through multiple items.
In order to back my design decisions, we decided to go ahead and conduct usability testing in order to present more concrete data.
ITERATIONS
Testing MVPs with prototype
I conducted usability tests to see if users understood the purpose of LuxyFund. We also tested to see if the data presented on the platform was user friendly, easy to comprehend, and useful for a luxury bag portfolio.
Insights
Overview and My Closet tab is confusing.
Clarification on data presented, a lot of redundant data presented in different formats/charts.
Looking for a way to be notified on the best time to sell an item.
Ability to filter through what bags to see.
During our usability testing, users had no problems understanding the information in table view.
Upon discussion with stakeholders, I ended up creating a more inclusive design by allowing users to choose between table and card view depending on their data visualization abilities.
SOLUTION
Manage real time data
Luxyfund helps users track the value of their investments and facilitate informed buying and selling decisions by providing data and research on individual luxury items.
Fintech Portfolio Dashboard
Clear breakdown of users’ luxury bag worth by brand, individual item, and entire collection.
No more confusion between e-commerce platform vs fintech platform and layout provides room to scale.
Tips and News sections to offer additional insights into current luxury space so users can make better and more informed decisions.
Information at a Glance
Users are presented with the most relevant information at a glance: the most up to date value of one’s bag. There is no confusion anymore whether one is shopping or looking at one’s financial portfolio.
Additional images as well as description were removed as it was unnecessary information for a financial portfolio.
Gently Prompt Users to Create Account
Search bar front and center to guide users straight into item lookup which will then prompt users to sign up after viewing their bag.
Introduces ‘Our Features’ section to give users an overview of Luxyfund to entice users to sign up.
Users can be given x amount of free viewings, then additional items are locked in order to promote sign up.
Brand guidelines
The client already had an existing style guide but they weren’t happy with the original color scheme. 2 other designers and I brought the guide into Figma and created a Design System in order to ensure that the design standards are consistent across the entire app. We were working on different features so it was essential that our components, fonts, buttons and colors all matched.
The typography and colors chosen are meant to reflect modern, luxurious, and trustworthy brand attributes.
Reflection & takeaways
Compromise - There were many times where I just wanted to appease the stakeholders with what they wanted to make communication easier, but I learned how to defend my design decisions as I always had users’ best interest in mind.
Work Flow - Finding the balance between working with teammates and stakeholders is an art in it of itself. I was able to adjust my work style to match how everyone worked in order to deliver my best work.
Never Finished - As designers and problem solvers, our work is never truly finished and that’s okay. As a team, we had to understand that there will always be room for improvement. For the amount of time given and work accomplished, we are all immensely proud of how far we have come together and could not have achieved this much without one another!
I had the pleasure of working with these skilled UX designers + our fur babies supporting us!
Thanks for reading!
Let’s chat at michelletcwang@gmail.com