Charles Ward - Lead Product Designer

Home Improvement journeys are often long and complex. There is a huge choice of products requiring different skills and knowledge to complete them

My Role

Pivoted the team from an iOS App to a more universal responsive web service for customers to build a 2D plan of their bathroom add products and visualise it in a 3D. We also used this to automatically collate relevant how-to guides, videos, hints, tips and buyers guides to complete their project.

Results

As service Design Lead for a team of 3 UX and 3 UI Designers. I provided focus and support for my design team for their ideas to grow; whilst ensuring the direction and product features aligned with user research insights and business goals.

Research Insights

Getting started - DIY projects are full of unknowns and everyone needs a source of confidence (tradesmen, YouTube, friend or family member)
Flexibility in approach - Customers don’t always feel prepared to start, and can find it hard to adjust to changing circumstances and deal with the unexpected challenges that occur along the way
Flexibility in standards - Expectations and final outcomes can change along the way. Home improvement isn't necessarily about aiming for perfection or following rules.
Encountering adversity - Customers need to be supported when dealing with the unexpected, learning from mistakes or due to loss of momentum.

We discovered that when it comes to improving your home, it can be a world of pleasure and pain. This informed the creation of experience and empathy maps for different customer types.

I translated the key pain points and insights into a high level service map – showing potential entry points and features. This set the strategic direction for the design team to generate concepts.

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Value Propositions

How might we... inspire customers to start new projects

How might we…guide customers to becoming better home improvers

How might we… provide tailored support to get the job done

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Designs

We created concepts as low fidelity wireframes - which we evaluated to achieve specific goals and KPI's. After iterating and improving the designs, we built high fidelity proto.io prototypes for user testing. After validating designs, we worked in 2 week sprints, handing off validated designs to a dev team.

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Testing and refining

Through regular user testing with an interactive prototype we measured:

Engagement with content and features.
Percentage of users saving or creating a project.
Percentage of users who would use the service for their own home improvement project.

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Through interviews and surveys we learned:

Whether the tool gives novices more confidence to start and complete a project.
Whether the tool encourages customers to start other home improvement projects

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I helped define and develop solutions that help simplify home improvement to increase the chances of starting and completing a DIY project successfully.

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Client

Kingfisher Group

Year

2017