MyFloretz

Scope

Project Deliverables

Interactive high fidelity prototype

Duration

3 weeks

My Role

Research Lead

Design Support

Tools

Figma

Miro

Google G Suite

Overview

For young girls the process of going through all the hormonal and social changes of puberty can be daunting. Parents want to help their children through this transition but can find it difficult to approach the conversation of puberty, and often find their child to be unreceptive. At this age children are beginning to exercise their independence. Parent figures also struggle to find age appropriate products for their daughters such as skin care, undergarments and period products.

MyFloretz has a vision of creating a website that offers subscription based age appropriate products for young girls and to offer them educational content for both parents and children about the changes that happen during puberty.

Our team worked remotely across 4 times zones in a 3 week sprint utilizing agile methodologies. We leveraged collaborative software such as Figma and Miro to coordinate our efforts, and stayed in contact through Slack and Zoom.

The Process

Research

Heuristic Evaluation

A survey of the usability of the current website revealed inconsistent naming conventions of the products which could lead to customer confusion. There was also tight button spacing and confusing use of color signals.

While overall the site was easy to use the above issues combined to convey a haphazard and unprofessional feeling.

Competitive Analysis

We investigated several popular product subscription services on the market, focusing on the onboarding process as well as subscriptions management.

We also found that most services had several different modifiable options including convenience services as well as discovery or surprise boxes.

User Interviews

This is my favorite part of the research process. It is a chance to remove my own biases and assumptions and began to put myself into the shoes of the user. I identified two target groups. Parents of children between ages 8-18 and consumers of subscription product boxes. Many of the users interviewed fit into both categories. I conducted 9 interviews over three days with people from age 35 - 55 located across the US.

We also conducted contextual inquiries, asking our interviewees to show us how they managed their monthly subscriptions.

Synthesis

The next step was to Affinity Map the key takeaways from our interviews and contextual inquiries. In this step we were able to identify patterns in the user's experience. We crafted these takeaways into “I” statements which allows us to get into the head space of the target user.

Personas

Tasha

Tabitha

11 year old Tasha comes home from school one day exclaiming that she needs a training bra and tampons. Her mom, Tabitha, quickly asks if she started her period to which Tasha answers “no!” Tabitha then asks in confusion why Tasha needs tampons and begins to explain the difference between different period products Tasha might use but she can see that she is being tuned out and the conversation goes no where.

Tabitha needs a way to collaborate with Tasha in purchasing body care products so that she can be sure they are healthy and age appropriate, while also allowing Tasha to exercise her independence.

Ideation

Design Studio

The UX team did a design studio exercise where we would choose a problem to address and independently we hand sketched what solutions might look like. We then came back together to identify what features made the most sense and what commonalities we had arrived on. From there we created a MSCW diagram to strategize which features to prioritize.

Design Strategy

We developed a strategy modeled from of agile methodologies. Our first task was to meet the client goal of redesigning the current features on the website and adding on subscription capabilities, which was our minimum viable product. Once we had that locked in we wanted to add on the collaborative family account capabilities. We choose to make both desktop and mobile designs, but focused on mobile based on MYFL’s customer analytics.

MVP

My first focus was on redesigning the current features on the website for mobile to make them more intuitive and familiar to users.

The homepage needed to be reformatted in a way that drew attention to the desired featured products, in this case the subscription box.

I also developed a global navigation that would allow users to easily access the content on the website they were seeking. This included access to their shopping cart, personal account information, the homepage, a search function and a drop down menu that contains further product categories and content.

I created a box landing page that included information about the monthly box’s theme and how much you save purchasing the box, and the items contained within.

To learn more about individual products you can click through to the product page where expanding tabs detail the products description, use, ingredients, and reviews.

Information included on each product card is the original value of the product, name and the name of the company, customer rating, and icons indicating product information such as “sustainable”, “organic” or “vegan”.

We created a wireframe flow to consider further screens that were needed and determine how to set up a clickable prototype.

Multi-User Family Account

We wanted to add additional features that would allow for children to build their product box independently from their parents, while parents were still able to maintain oversight and final say. We realized that the best way to achieve this was through a shared family account that parents could oversee. We would create filters that would allow parents to restrict the categories of products their child with see and the more specific types of products within those categories. We would also create an “allowance” function that the parents would pre-determine on a monthly basis for their child. Once these guidelines were in place, parents could feel comfortable allowing their child to shop freely without direct oversight. Once a child had built out their box for the month, they could send it to their parent for final approval.

Iteration

Usability Testing

We began usability testing. We conducted 9 tests over zoom utilizing screen share. We stuck with the same age range of 35-55, as this is the age of the target user.

Task 1 Tabitha wants to make a one time purchase of a product box from MyFloretz.

Task 2 Tabitha wants to sign up to receive the “ultimate box” monthly from MYFL for her daughter.

Task 3 Tabitha wants to set parental controls for the products viewed by her daughter to limit bras to only “starter” bras and period products to only pads.

Based off of feedback we implemented several key changes:

Task 1

The location and size of the floating call to action button was confusing, we modified this by making it smaller and placing it slightly above the bottom of the screen.
The format of informational pages for the products included in the box led people to want to purchase those individual items. We modified combined the box overview page with the individual product pages creating a single page that combined both features.

Task 2

We removed a question from the onboarding form that asked about what the child on the account calls the adult, based on tester feedback that it made them uncomfortable.
We reworded the three categories for level of restriction from “all, restrict, never” to “yes, modify, no”.

Task 3

Instead of forcing users to set up accounts as a mandatory family account where parents create restrictions on the way their daughters can shop, we made this optional and moved the feature to account management.

Mockups

Next Steps

Add educational content features such as blog posts, podcasts, interactive webinars, and categorize these based on child age and parent desired content.
Create allowance feature that controls amount child can spend in a given month.
Redefine naming conventions for products to be consistent and uniform.

What I learned

Initially I though of this product as a basic subscription based e-commerce redesign. As we conducted our research and learned more about the pain points that exist between young girls going through this stage of their lives and their parents I realized that there is innovation to be found in unexpected places if you take the time to learn from the users.

I also learned a lot of facilitation, time management, and organizational skills from my team members, who excel at these soft skills in ways I do not. Collaborating with them was an invaluable experience for me.