Restoration Hardware

Overview

I was tasked to create a digital solution that streamlines the product line review process for our client, Restoration Hardware. Restoration Hardware is an upscale home-furnishing company that aims to provide an experience for their consumers. In order to create the best products for their customers, Restoration Hardware completes multiple intense line reviews that require close attention to detail and multiple iterations until they are confident that their products meet the high expectations that their consumers have.

Skillset

User Research, Interaction & visual design, and UI/UX design

Timeline

May - July 2022 (3 months)

Platform

IOS Application

tools

Figma, Figjam, Miro, and Zoom

Challenge

Restoration Hardware came to us for a digital solution that facilitates and streamlines their current product line review process. Currently Restoration Hardware relies heavily on a non-digital process that is hurting efficiency and organization.

Solution

We presented Restoration Hardware with a digital solution that is cohesive to their existing line review process and increases productivity as well as transparency between team members. The team and I prioritized creating a design that integrates the non-digital steps that players within the line review process in order to facilitate learnability.

Design Process

As a team, we decided to follow the design thinking process. This involved understanding our users through qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to gain insights that revealed the goals. pain-points and behaviors of our potential users. With these findings, we were then able to define our users and properly begin ideating and designing a solution that was validated through user testing.

Understand

- user interviews
- user surveys
- painpoints

Define

- journey map
- user persona

Ideate

- competitive analysis
- user flow
- sketches

Prototype

- mid-fi design
- wireframe

Test

- results
- redesign
- conclusion

01 understand

Target Audience

Since Restoration Hardware was our direct client, our target audience was very clear. For this digital solution, our main priority was to develop a holistic understanding of the experiences/tasks fulfilled by the individuals involved within the line review process. This includes executives, designers, merchandisers and buyers.

User interviews

Understanding our Users

To gain a better understanding of who our users are, we conducted user interviews. These interviews were executed remotely through Zoom video calls. During this process we interviewed 6 potential users, involving various executives and designers. This revealed 4 key takeaways.

Tasks/feedback being lost in translation

“When we’re at the line reviews everyone is using pen and paper to keep track of feedback. Very often tasks get lost in translation and are not being complete, which is a huge problem when it comes to meeting deadlines.” - Designer
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8ft by 10ft non digital posters are causing organization and storing issues

“We are currently posting large PDF print outs all throughout our line review warehouses during reviews and it’s just a huge pain. A digital substitute for this would be nice. It being a physical poster means we have to take photos of annotations in order to access these visuals remotely.” - Lead Designer

Lack of communication from entry level designers

“It seems like less experienced designers are afraid to speak up which is frustrating. They’re the ones that have new and great out of the box ideas! Thats exactly what we’re looking for.” - Executive

Line reviews are a fast paced, on the move process

“During line reviews everything is go go go. You’re also always moving or standing so you can’t use a laptop. Most people are either writing on pen or paper or in their i-phone notes then transferring it into their own organization process” - Designer

User surveys

Quantitative Research

In order to validate these key findings and discover more information about our users we began conducting user surveys with RH’s current employees.

75%

felt that the current process is somewhat unorganized

63%

had experienced a time that feedback was lost

57%

shared that they have missed or almost missed a deadline due to miscommunication

54%

stated that they felt stressed during line reviews

60%

of entry level employees stated that they were uncomfortable sharing opinions during reviews

analysis

Painpoints

After analyzing our qualitative and quantitative data we discovered 3 common pain-paints that our users shared.

Everything being done on paper

Tracking/maintaining annotations and feedback through sticky notes on these large display posters have caused users a lot of issues. Information is being lost and it is hard to refer back to redesigns.

Task management

Not being able to see progress of collections or updates on what needs to be done next.

Lack of communication

Uncertainty if tasks are complete and are ready for handoffs. Entry level employees are not sharing their opinions and the companies potential growth is being stunted.

Solution

Streamlining the line review process.

Digitize the current review process

Allow users to comment/leave feedback from their mobile device. This will help maintain the history of iterations, improve organization as well as improve collaboration.

Implement task management system

Providing users with a task management system will improve transparency of the status of collections, improve efficiency, and reduce the chances of miscommunication.

03 ideate

Competitive Analysis

In an effort to understand the market and observe what is currently being used to overcome user pain-points, we conducted a competitive analysis. Since there aren’t many solutions that are specific to the line review process, we considered a number of online collaboration tools.

Feature Mapping

Utilizing our findings from our competitive analysis, we defined what features were needed to prioritize the needs of our users. The x axis of this graph displays how many players within the line review process will be using these features from few to all. The y axis displays how often these players will be using these features from none of the time to all of the time. With that being said, this graph revealed some of the necessary features, seen in the upper right quadrant, needed to meet our users needs and goals .

User Flow

Here we have a user flow that displays how a user would navigate to make a comment and convert a comment to a task.

White-boarding/Sketches

We then took this user flow to the whiteboard and began visualizing what this would look like within the application. This process involved the ideation of view layouts, carousels, creating a comment, tagging, and comment cards.

04 prototype

Mid-Fi Designs/Wire-framing

Original design decisions:

1. maintain pdf document format of collection layout that they use for collection posters in order to remain familiarity
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2. allow users to select color of comment, as they do when currently using sticky notes
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3. drag and place comments to relevant area of concern

4. confirmation popup once comment is placed in order to reduce error

5. allow users to edit the level at which a comment pertains to (collection, cabinet, couch, etc.)

Feature Mapping

Wire-framing

05 Test

Results

The testing phase of this project consisted of 5 usability tests that followed the user flow of creating a comment and converting a comment into a task. We found that our design had 1 major problem as well as a few minor issues.

Main issue: Converting a comment to a task.

Users experienced trouble due to a swiping action that was required to convert comments into tasks.
We decided to keep this action for advanced users, but made sure to implement a more all-inclusive action.
In addition, users felt that there should be an option to convert comments to tasks within the comment input field.

Minor issues:

Task modal (option to task a team as well as individuals)
Consistent icons
QR scanner is too similar to the collections page

High Fidelity Prototype

Following these redesigns we conducted an additional round of testing that resulted in a great success and led us to our high fidelity prototype below.

View Prototype

What I learned:

Strive for progress, not perfection.
Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on incomplete work.
Practice, practice, practice!
Break up large tasks into actionable chunks.
Have fun and enjoy the work you do.

Result:

A mobile application that is currently being pushed to development!!!