PROJECT OVERVIEW

When I received my final assignment of the UX Writing Academy to build a fictional ecommerce website from scratch, I immediately knew what I wanted to create.

I had just picked up woodworking as a hobby, and had had the most painful experience getting started—information about beginner tools was so overwhelming (and conflicting) that I spent months researching and seeking advice before I even bought my first tool.

So I set out on a mission to make woodworking accessible to beginners. Here’s how Baked Beams was born.

TOOLS AND METHODS

USER ENGAGEMENT

The first thing I did was a bit of research. I needed to know how people felt about hobbies and getting started, so I could properly define the problem to solve, and my product’s ultimate goals. I did some qualitative research in the form of user interviews with some family and friends, to find out what they felt was the biggest pain point of starting a new hobby. And it turned out, majority (4 out of 6) hated the initial research.

Then, I gathered more telling data through user surveys. 32 responses were gathered through Facebook, Reddit, and my social circle. 75% of interviewees fell within the age range of 21 to 36, which was Baked Beam’s target age demographic.

Key Takeaways:

• One of the biggest pain points of starting a new hobby is doing research (interview)

• 71.9% found it difficult to source the right tools when picking up a new hobby (survey)

• 90.6% saw hobbies primarily as a form of rest and relaxation (survey)

CONVERSATION MINING

To dig deeper, I trawled through Facebook interest groups, woodworking subreddits, and the comments of beginner-friendly YouTube videos, and noticed a consensus among beginner woodworkers: Newbies don’t know how to start. And they don’t know what to buy.

THE CHALLENGE

With all that research done, I had a very clear goal in mind for Baked Beams: to create the ultimate beginner-friendly shopping experience for new woodworkers.

PRODUCT FEATURES

The next thing to do was to come up with Baked Beams’s features. Everything from basic functionalities one expects to see in every website, to surprisingly delightful (albeit more complex) ones, which could come later.

More importantly, I needed something that would help solve my user problem and achieve my goals. After some brainstorming, I identified it to be the Baked Beams starter kit: an all-in-one woodworking kit that would totally remove any need for research on necessary tools, and allow new woodworkers to get started in the hobby almost immediately. This starter kit would be the main highlight of Baked Beams.

CONTENT STYLE GUIDE

In the relatively short time I had, I then created a scaled-down content style guide—not comprehensive by any means, but functional enough for me to refer to whenever I wrote content. With supporting research and a clear direction forward for Baked Beams, the three voice traits I saw the company taking on were fun, supportive, and inspiring.

BUILDING THE WEBSITE

With all the groundwork in place, it was finally time to design the screens. For the purposes of this project, I focused my efforts on Baked Beams’s three most important screens: The homepage, the product screen, and the checkout screen.

homepage

1. Brand Proposition and Personality Upfront: Headline is kept casual, fun, and in line with the brand voice. Body content clearly and succinctly tells users the ease of starting woodworking with us.

2. User-Generated Content gives new visitors a glimpse of what others have accomplished—utilising social proof to boost our adoption of new customers.

3. Content Preview of the lessons we offer, to both intrigue potential customers and let them know what to expect.

1. Communicating Value to reassure users that they’re getting their money’s worth.

2. Iconographic Call-outs that communicate our product’s characteristics immediately.

3. Lower-Barrier Alternative for users who find the product too complex, time-consuming or expensive.

4. Clear List of Items to let users know what they’re buying in a glance.

5. Social Proof of fellow users completing the project successfully, as a form of encouragement.

1. Total Bill Upfront for maximum honesty, and to remove any possibilities of bill shock.

2. Secure Payment Assurance at a crucial point of the user journey, to alleviate concerns of safety.

3. ‘Free Shipping’ Blurb that reinforces user’s sense of getting value for their money.

4. Guest Checkout Option for users looking for a fuss and commitment-free purchase.

You can view the full screens on Figma here.

TO CONCLUDE:

Given the time and resource constraints, coupled with the additional obstacles COVID-19 has brought about, many steps in this process were done lite. But, as much as possible, I made it a point to also do them right. And through this holistic experience of the product design process from start to end, I’ve learnt many valuable insights about UX beyond just a writer’s lens.