── Case Study
Furniture Website UI
Website and app design concept for a furniture store
A design-related website should have a decent style which reflects the theme of the business. There are many furniture websites, but a large amount of them have an absence of simplicity and style. After exploring various examples, I decided to come up with a redesign and a new concept for a modern furniture website. This case study is a personal project and an exercise that describes the process of redesigning a website and creating a mockup of a potential mobile application, while defining functionality based on the insights.
I gathered detailed reviews from consumeraffairs.com, which provides consumer news and a SaaS that allows brands to connect with consumers. According to their information, some of the most popular furniture websites on the market are Wayfair, Overstock, and Ikea.
The next step is to gather and categorize customer needs by applying 'card sorting' activity.
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I decided to set the user personas around the two major use cases I identified while card sorting and interviewing users. I came up with persona types that define potential customers of the website.
• Peter is a bargain shopper who is always interested in a great deal
• Kate is a busy person who is buying online to save time
Two of the desirable key style elements for both persona types were modern look and simplicity.
Based on conducted research, user reviews, analyzing the top furniture website models, card sorting, and progressive personas - I came up with the first drafts of our potential product.
Based on the important insights obtained through the discovery and exploration stages, we are now able to implement our ideas and create the first prototypes of the website. As it was found in the Competitor Analysis and Progressive Persona sections, our first mockups contain a modern, clean, and simple design, as well as easy navigation and straight-forward structure.
In order to achieve a simple and modern look, I decided to use light colors, which are common in furniture and decoration, combined with flat design and real elements (i.e. couches, lamps, tables). This approach helped separate and emphasize each category. The chosen colors represent some of the most popular pastel tones for house decoration. Beige and neutral colors convey calmness and relaxation, as both help the user focus on browsing items. The boldness and spacing of the font make it look legible on both the title and main text sections, which help the user navigate the website with ease.
The challenge was to create a unique, yet simple and trendy look for a furniture website. By following the UX process (researching initial ideas, sketching, drafting, choosing color palettes / fonts, creating prototypes, defining the logo, and testing the user interface), the idea for an eye-pleasing design was implemented and the goal was achieved.
The most important takeaways in this project were:
• Time frame and following instructions
• Clear descriptions,
• Narrowing down to one design concept and pushing it to final
• Relying on customer feedback
