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--Houzz's Mission
The challenge was to redesign a feature of a Kleiner Perkins company’s product.
Houzz is aimed to be the one-stop-shop for all your home design needs by giving you access to:
Visual tools and resources for ideation
Professionals for building
A Shop for buying
I chose Houzz because their bold innovation in visual technologies enables the ability for everyone to express their creativity. Houzz also provides a space where homeowners and professional could better connect and collaborate with each other, which is completely matched to my passion - use design to make connections.
Day 1&2: Understanding the user and context
Day 2&3: Auditing current product
Day 3&4: Brainstorming, sketches, and low-fi wireframes
Day 5&6: Prototype and iteration
Last Day: Organizing Story
Conducted surveys with 51 responses and interviewed 4 people: Those who have renovation experiences as well as interior designers who know the process and industry very well. I conducted these interviews and surveys to understand the process, and their workflow to determine what are the steps and process of renovation and what their needs are in that process.
How homeowners currently renovate their houses?
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Communication is key
I feel difficult to communicate my idea because I can’t draw.
I always need advice from my family and my friends.
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I find that visual aides makes it easier to communicate because sometimes others just can’t picture what you are describing.
If you both communicate you can find how you are gonna renovate and what your plan is gonna be and how you are gonna plan every thing out and renovate it.
I value others opinions and care too much about what people think. I also want validation that what I want to do is a good idea and/or durable.
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“Clients(homeowners) always come with styles they like. But they don’t know how to adapt to their house ”
“The canvas looks good but the layout is different from my room and I don’t know how large it is.”
“Sometime the product looks great, I still need to know how it look in my house”
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“I want to see the scale of the product in my room ”
I explored and navigated through the Houzz app and website to understand what Houzz currently provides in the renovation process. I also introduced Houzz to users ( or potential users) and discussed all the functions together to probe into what they like, dislike, where they feel lost, and have questions. My goal was to not intervene in their thought process, and observe their actions and behaviors at each touchpoint with the features of Houzz.
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By the understanding and exploring, I decided to focus on the “Sketch Function” because:
The “Sketch Function” enables homeowners to develop and visualize their renovate ideas which is the most desired ability for users to communicate and collaborate with others in the renovation process.“Sketch Function” connects almost every section of the Houzz ecosystem. This function is a great way to introduce and connect all the tool, resources and services to homeowners.
Through the research and auditing, I found there are 4 main pain points of the “sketch function” I should target:
Misleading name:
the function here is to provide a canvas for users to visualize their ideas which is different from the name “Sketch”
The importance of the function and entry is undervalued:
currently, the entry of sketch is visually equaled to the “ideabooks” function and the “camera” function which makes the entry hard to be noticed.
Lack of communication and collaboration:
the reason why users need the visualization tool is to communicate the ideas with others so they could get feedback and better collaborate with professionals. There is a lack of tools to help user communicate with other users and pros.
Gaps between concept and reality:
Designs which homeowners created with current sketch function have a distance to what the reality is. Users feel difficult to find the canvas that is based on the real layout of their house.
1. Highlight the importance of the “sketch function” and better attract users to start a design.
2. Provide a more personalized canvas for them to visualize and test their ideas.
3. Make “sketch function” as the entry point of the whole Houzz ecosystem by involving other sections of Houzz into the “sketch” process.
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I did several rounds of sketches and paper testing to brainstorm and validate potential solutions with users. Then I did wireframe to organize the user flow and prototype the tasks.
>>> Redesign Goal No.1
"Sketch Function" is the gateway for users to explore the Houzz ecosystem. However, current design of the entry is too difficult to be noticed because of its location and its portion. The sketch button now does not explains what the function is so that users hardly have the interests to look into it.
Therefore, the most important thing to redesign the function is to design the entry so that users will be attracted to start their design.
The goal of the redesign is to quickly catch users' attention, understand what the function is and motivate them to start designing. So I choose to use banner with a image on it so that user can easily get what the idea is and enter the function by clicking on the call to action button.
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>>> Design goal No.2
When user start design for their home. They need the canvas to be as close as the real house as possible. A personalized design canvas will reduce the gap between design and reality and help owners vision their home accurately.
>>> Design goal No. 3
Better connection between different parts of Houzz ecosystem stronger the one-stop-shopping experience for users and benefits the ecosystem itself.
Houzz is a platform which implemented almost every aspects of the renovation products and services but none of the features are standing alone features. Each feature is connected to another part of the entire experience. For me, it was important to understand how all of these features up-sell another, to create an ecosystem to each unique individual.
The challenge here was that it was hard to pinpoint where in the flow I exactly wanted to focus on, because each feature seemed to carry a lot of weight.
In this KPCB redesign challenge, I believed that finding the right problem, and identifying the opportunity on how to redesign and better the current flow was crucial. For me, with the challenge I faced mentioned above, it was hard to just focus on one feature, and required me to think the entire ecosystem.
I realized the power of brining users earlier on into this process, to see their perspectives, which I was then able to gain insight of how different user groups
( expert, and potential user) saw the same feature/flow.
👋🏻 Contact me at
Willowsheng666@gmail.com
or Find me on LinkedIn, Medium.