WHEEL WORKS CASE STUDY

I was taking General Assembly’s UX bootcamp and was assigned to help redesign a small local store’s website. I actually live two minutes away from a small downtown area with many small businesses. I looked at their websites and ultimately chose to redesign Wheel Work’s, which is successful bike store. I chose to redesign their website because I thought they could use the most UX design help. This project was consistent with my professor’s recommendation to take on the hardest challenge in order to learn the most.

Overview

Problem:

There are people who want to be able to shop easily for bikes online and are looking for a community of cyclist.

Solution:

Redesign Wheel Work’s website to make it easier for customers to shop for bikes, cycling accessories and to find others to ride with in their community.

  • Research

  • Define

  • Design

 

Research

Although I could spot some issues issues on Wheel Work’s website, I knew I had to go into the field and interview actual users. That way I was not relying on my personal bias to redesign Wheel Work’s website.

I ended up going to a coffee shop near Wheel Works. I brought my laptop, a paper that said “Free Espresso for a Website review,” notes, and of course my wallet to pay for those espressos. I was definitely a little nervous about interviewing random strangers. For my other projects I relied on my classmates and friends to be my users. However, I wanted to push myself to find users that I didn’t know. And improve my interviewing skills.

I asked people in the coffee shop if they liked to ride bicycles and if they were interested in doing a 10 minute interview with me for a free coffee espresso. I ended up interviewing three different users. A woman in her 30s, a man in his 50s, and a teenage boy. I got so much more insight from the interviews than I thought I expected. My interviewees did a great job at expressing their thoughts while looking through Wheel Works’ website and following my instructions. I basically gave them a debrief about what I was doing for General Assembly. I told them to just scroll through Wheel Works and voice their thoughts, opinions, and feelings. I also gave them a few instructions such as “show me how you’d find a mountain bike.” Lastly, I had them look at a local competitor’s website and state their thoughts. I audio recorded the interviews and took notes.

 
 

Affinity Mapping

  • Wheel Works

    Users statements about Wheel Works

    I got many insights about users issues with the website. For example, several said that they couldn’t find any address, location, or store hours on the website. And as a user- they would really like to see that information. Also many users were very frustrated with Wheel Works’s Navigation, it was very overwhelming for them. Therefore I also did an affinity map on their website to see things more clearly for myself. Where users biggest pain points were.

  • User Statements about their Competitor, Trek

    After going on Wheel Works’ website, I had my users go on their local competitor’s website, and talk about their experience on it. Many users liked Trek’s Navigation better. And liked how they had more pictures and included store hours and location.

Screen Shot 2022-04-30 at 8.05.37 AM.png
 

Before and After: the Home Page

  • Added store hours and location

  • Made the “Account, Store, & Cart” more visible for users

  • Made the navigation bar more visible

  • Included pictures of the Wheel works store community

  • Added a Featured Bike On Sale with a direct Call to action

  • Added an “On Sale” Category

  • Added “Join our Wheel Works Community” with a Facebook link.

  • Navigation before

    One of the main things my users struggled with was this Navigation. They said it was overwhelming for them to see all this information at once. They also couldn’t tell what the titles were. Users said that this would stress them out when shopping. And they wouldn’t like to see categories that they aren’t interested in.

  • Navigation after

    To solve my user’s issues of feeling overwhelmed with the navigation, I decided it was worth it to create multiple steps for users. For example, to click on >Shop>Bikes>Mountain. So adding one more step in, but reducing information overload for users. I also made the category titles very large and clear to see.

Results

After I made changes to the website, I tested users again. I tested three users and asked them to fill out surveys. I tested to see if they took less time to find a mountain bike with the new navigation changes. All user’s were able to find a mountain bike faster with the redesigned website.

I think these changes could really benefit Wheel Works because their customers would have a better experience shopping. They’d feel “less stressed” and want to spend more time on the site. Also, the improvement may direct more in-person traffic to the store with a website that displays more about their great cycling culture and the local community. Ultimately, I believe my design changes could help to increase the company’s profits.

Make it stand out

User Research for  Dan Eckhart Law

User Research for Dan Eckhart Law’s website

I conducted User Research for Dan Eckhart Law. Dan Eckhart is a top Criminal Defense attorney in the state of Florida. His website holder Go Daddy altered him that the Average time people spend on his page is below average for most websites- indicating some possible user experience issues. Thus I was hired to conduct User Experience Research to help Dan Eckhart Law’s page to have a higher AOP and hopefully get him more clients in return.

The Research Process:

I conducted 6 user interviews with potential users at a coffee shop. Since there’s not necessarily an easy way to access people in need of a defense attorney, except for interviewing people in a prison. Sometimes- people not ordinarily involved in crime can find themselves in trouble (guilty or not) and be in need of a good criminal defense attorney.

I found 5 other criminal defense attorneys websites in Florida that came up fairly high on google and put thumbnails of their homepages on a screen along with my dad’s homepage. I asked people if they would be interested in giving me 5-10 minutes of their time to help me conduct UX Research for a website.

I told them that “this might sound a little absurd but i’m going to give you a hypothetical situation: You are convicted of a crime. Whether you are guilty or not, you’re facing 20, 30 years to life in prison. I’m going to give you 10 seconds to look at these thumbnails. Then you’ll rank which criminal defense attorney that you’d trust with your life and prefer to hire based on their homepages. There are no right or wrong answers. This is based off of your own opinions, observations, intuitions, and thoughts.