Zwende
​Zwende is an e-commerce website that provides personalized products to the customers while allowing them to be connected to their culture by preserving the traditional Indian handcrafted designs.
Overview
My Role
Zwende is a platform that allows users to customize and personalize handcrafted products. I aimed to solve the problem customers were facing to place the order. I fathomed user behavior, which was the most challenging part of this project.

I applied the design thinking process to deliver better design for the homepage.

As the only designer on this project, the first thing I had to do was to explain the problem to the stakeholders even though they were fixated on a different solution. ​
UX Designer
​Research Synthesis (Primary Research, Heuristic
Analysis, Use Cases);

Ideating (Task Analysis, Function Analysis);

Prototyping (Wireframes);

Testing (User Testing);
Zwende
What's Zwende?
  • ​It is an e-commerce website based in India.
  • It aims to serve users looking for specific handcrafted products.
  • It intends to connect customers to local handcraft workers and offer them a unique product that they desire.
  • The service provides an option for customers to customize their products.​

Frustrations​:
  • Trust Building
  • Brand Value
  • On-boarding
  • Organizing
Discovery
How does customization work?
It’s a three-step process,
  • The customer picks a product he/she wants to buy.
  • The customer chooses the design, color, and material for the product.
  • The customizing engine shows in real-time the appearance of the product which the customer can choose to purchase.
Old design (Zwende home page)
User Interview Research
​I conducted an online survey that helped to get contextual one-on-one interviews with eleven users. The research interview provided quantitative and qualitative data for why users purchased a product; which proved important when studying decision making and behavior patterns of the user while customizing a product.
Key Insights:
  • Most users thought that the website offers only ladies’ bags.
  • They found filters to be confusing and inefficient.
  • All the participants stated that they would love to shop for gifts rather than for themselves.
  • Participants loved the customization feature despite ambiguity in the beginning.
  • They loved a video which exhibited Zwende's values and was buried deep inside web-pages.
  • Most of them missed out on the home décor and men’s products.
Identifying problems in the existing homepage
  • The home page lacked a call to action.
  • Only one product was displayed on the home page.
  • The brand value wasn’t displayed.
  • The product customization process wasn't fully explained.
  • Banners led to irrelevant pages.
  • Products were hidden in the disorganization.
User Stories (use cases)
Plenty of issues were found in the existing use cases. It was important to generate new use cases and deliver the website around it. 
The user wants to
  • know about Zwende and its brand values.
  • know what it does.
  • understand the personalization process.
  • identify various available products.
  • lookup and buy products.
  • view pricing.
  • clear doubts (FAQs and Contact Us.)
Problem Statement
From research and analysis, I developed a new problem statement which was: 

Redesign the Zwende homepage to help customers locate available products, understand the customization process, and allow them to order the most suitable products.
Original website before the project.
Conceptualization
The new design was structured based on the initial research insights. 
I tried to incorporate all the components in the most intuitive way.
Initial concept sketch
Validation
The usability test was performed on both the prototype and the original website to assess the design. Necessary changes were implemented based on the feedback received. A 'Likert scale' was used to obtain responses from users after the tasks which were conducted after testing both the website and the wireframe. 
After analyzing the results, it was clear that the new wireframes worked better than the original website. The feedback received from the user tests were implemented and a few changes were made in the final interface of the homepage.
                                         Final Homepage design
Final redesigned Zwende home page 
Key Learning: 
They might ask for what they want, but not know what they need: Initially, I was handed this project to design the onboarding process either to explain customization or to help website filter items according to personal preferences. Later I realized that it wasn’t the problem that was needed to be solved.

Research is the most important part of any project: If I had delivered what the stakeholder asked me for without performing research, then we would have ended up with a design that was a hindrance instead of help.

Perspective is the key: The platform was developed by keeping individual customers in mind. The personalization feature was expected to work as the customer would like to buy products for themselves according to their preferences; instead, all the participants chose to buy gifts for their loved ones.

​​
Outcome
After launching the new homepage, users were able to navigate through the website more effectively and were also able to browse through a wider range of products, which resulted in increased the length of visits and sales.
The user stories added to the brand identity and people found it easy to connect with the brand.
​

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