1. The Brief
The Co-op Bookshop and Samsung Australia went into a partnership to promote and sell Samsung products on the Co-op’s website to university students in Australia.
2. Our proposition
We wanted to create this “seamless” journey for the user when they visit the Co-op website. The result we wanted was for the users to discover the endless benefits that are the dominating force to the technology market. The benefits of Samsung products dominate two of the main products in the technology market which Samsung is known for. These two products are the smartphone and the tablet markets. Although, there are other products besides those two, such as microwaves, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners, it’s the smartphone and the tablet that we clearly wanted to research. In retrospect, these are products that university students may want (and need) to purchase sooner or later, while in school especially.
3. Personas and research
Samsung had an eCommerce research document outlining how many Samsung products were sold on their online store. The fact that we were able to utilise the data from this document was an important element to our research. We did our own research with university students in which we surveyed as they purchased technology goods from the online store.
One major component in our survey was asking the students about ‘brand awarenes’” with Samsung home appliances as opposed to others, such as Breville, Sunbeam, and Tefal. This research was conducted at UNSW, University of Sydney, and UTS campuses in Sydney. From the research we conducted, we developed two personas. With this data, we represented the kind of audience that we were targeting. Thus, the content strategy for this audience was easily implemented.
4. Sketches and prototyping
From our collective research, we then started working on some basic sketches in order to get an idea of design layout and the user interface. This was important because not only did we have to follow a strict criteria, but we had to follow the Co-op Bookstore and Samsung brand specifications and guidelines. Moreso, after our initial sketches, we developed prototypes using Sketch and Photoshop. Sketch was used to conduct the user-testing data. In fact, all our prototypes were influenced by our earlier research data that was collected when we surveyed the Australian university students and data from the Samsung eCommerce report.
5. User testing
Our user testing was then conducted at our ofices and at university campuses in Sydney. We asked university students to use the prototypes to get some feedback on the utilisation of them. In addition, we conducted user-testing on UsabilityHub.com in order to get more data concerning the prototypes (i.e. heatmaps, navigation). Thus, we would be able to make amendments to our UX design based solely off our results from this user-testing phase.
6. Final stage
The final designs were made after we collected the results from the testing feedback and reviews. The response was for the product to tell a story for visitors of the website. It will have the regular product details, features, prices, and benefits for example. Not only will it be a website to purchase the Samsung products, but a place to learn about the technology and the Samsung capabilities and future product and promotions. These components were applied to all the products on the site, individually. Additionally, to make it easier for a user to navigate throughout the website, the products were categorised accordingly (ie. Study, Play, and Live). Covering all the Samsung products was our aim and, thus, making it available to the Co-op’s website.
