Beau is an online pet accessory store that carries high-quality and budget-friendly dog collars and leashes. Their products are made with durable materials, such as leather, cotton, and suede. With a wide range of styles to choose from, Beau can help you find the perfect collar or leash for your pooch.

In order to design and architect an e-commerce site that provides a satisfactory experience to customers, I first needed to understand what qualities they look for in a site when making online purchases. Therefore, I thoroughly researched the e-commerce space to learn best practices and looked at three of Beau's competitors to identify what worked and what did not.

Based on the learnings from the survey and face-to-face interviews with potential users, I developed personas to help me understand the users' goals and behaviors, as well as how they will interact with Beau. Then I determined a list of user stories that helped me create user flows. I focused on six main tasks to prioritize solving user needs.

Armed with a clearer understanding of user expectations and needs, I began working on creating wireframes. I focused on offering plenty of pictures, sizing information, and customer reviews for items, as well as providing a fast, convenient, and secure checkout experience.

One of the perks of building a product from the ground-up is that you get to work on brand identity (and you get to pick the name - how cool is that?). Although it is challenging, it is really fun to finally put a face to the project you have been working hard on.

When I learned through my survey that 57.9% primarily used their mobile devices to access the Internet, I was reminded of the importance of having a mobile-responsive design. Therefore, as I was first creating mockups for desktop, I was mindful of how all of the design elements would look on a smaller screen. I prototyped and tested my desktop design first, while I worked on mobile mockups on the side.

This first project was a great introduction to UX research and design. Prior to this project, I was less aware of how much testing, iterating, and validating took place throughout the design process. Although designing mobile screens was beyond the scope of this project, I am glad I decided to create a responsive site for Beau. It was a valuable experience for me and made me a more knowledgeable and well-rounded designer.

Looking back on this experience, however, I wish I had done more research and user testing. Aside from a survey, I would like to explore other methods, such as card sorting. I also want to get more comfortable with sketching out my ideas. For Beau, I went straight to Illustrator to create the logo, but in the future, I would like to use pen and paper to sketch out as many ideas as I can then move to Illustrator to bring them to life. Lastly, I am curious to try out Craft to build prototypes in Sketch. I did everything manually in InVision for this project, so hopefully Craft can help me be more efficient!