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How Thoughts Become Things

An alternative approach to online shopping

Role

UX / UI Designer

Supervisors

Prof. Constanze Langer, Denny Koch

Product

Bachelor Thesis

Timeframe

2020 – 2021

This my Bachelor Thesis project. In late 2020 I looked into online shopping experiences to see how online shops shape purchasing behaviour. I interviewed online shoppers and conducted research experiments to find out if there were patterns to their behaviour. In my thesis, I postulate that most online shops are designed to encourage shoppers to buy as much as possible. And I explore the possibility of how an online shopping experience might look if the online shop was actively trying to help you to find out what you're looking for.

Abstract

Shopping experiences have changed and evolved over time to adapt to new demands and consumer behaviours, trying to catch the attention of customers to make a profit. This trend has translated into online shopping as well, which has been rapidly growing in recent years. So far, online shopping experiences have been shaped from the perspective of retailers.

This work proposes an alternative approach to online shopping experiences, that slows down the decision-making process and focuses on listening to the consumer’s problems and needs. On the basis of empirical research and theories in behavioural economics and behavioural psychology regarding unplanned purchases and impulsive decision-making, the consumer-centric perspective on the topic is outlined. This perspective provides a benchmark for comparing this work’s solution with the status quo. The focus of the experience lies on the search process, therefore the examples explored in the design will follow the consumer experience from searching for a product to finding a product.

The design further explores conversational user interface design and, in emphasising slowness and reflection, challenges interaction design standards. As the consumer is guided through the experience, the process relies on both the user’s voluntary input and the system’s contextual responses. The work is concluded with a discussion of the results and remarks about the future of shopping experiences.

Internet sales as a percentage of total sales (ratio) (UK)

Search results for "desk chair" (otto.de)

In close feedback loops with the developers and a key user I created sketches and user flows and came up with a table editing feature that let users generalise overrides for data sets. We streamlined this process and adapted it to be used for later editing as well. We prototyped a version of this and tested it with stakeholders to see whether they could make the adjustments to the data sets that they needed and how easily they could follow the process. Our findings changed our perspective on user responsibility and the scope of the feature to simplify the process. I created detailed designs of the altered process and our developers implemented the changes.

Status quo of online shopping

My initial interest in this topic came up in Spring of 2020, when the beginning of the pandemic lead to curfews and lockdowns all around the world. As people’s access to physical shopping locations was restricted, online shopping activity went up dramatically. In the UK, internet sales were already steadily increasing – from about 3% to 19% over the course of 14 years. Between February and May of 2020 they then increased to over 33% – in only 3 months – reaching 37% in November.

Seeing as online shopping is becoming a bigger and bigger presence in our everyday lives, it’s worth asking what it is exactly, how the experience affects consumers and how it could work in the future.

Online shopping today caters predominantly to speed and convenience, meeting consumers growing desire for instant gratification and immediacy. As evidenced in most navigational flows in online shopping, the user prompt is immediately met with a selection of readily available products. Online shops try to meet this growing desire to make money. This is one way that retailers are shaping the shopping experience to increase sales.

Motivation

In this regard, my motivation for this work is to look at the experience from the consumer's perspective. I want to create a better shopping experience for me and my fellow consumers that embraces co-design and consumer advocacy. In this work, I will present an alternative approach to the online shopping experience that centres around the needs of consumers rather than the economic interests of online shopping companies.

Sitemap of the first version of Customers

Mapping out user groups

Personas & use cases

Analysing screens

To get a better understanding of the current state I then also created a sitemap and analysed some of the screens. Together with the team we established use cases and personas based on stakeholder feedback.

Based the findings from this we formed hypotheses for the redesign. To prove or disprove these I created a survey for the core users from our client’s customer satisfaction team. The results informed our user journeys as well as our overall approach to the redesign.

Research

To gain a deeper understanding of said experience I conducted research in the form of interviews and shopping diaries. For the interviews, I asked 8 of my peers about their shopping habits. I learned that the interviewees recognise the features in online shopping platforms that try persuade them to buy more. Also, they all had specific research patterns when it came to product areas that they were familiar with or had a vested interest in.

Later, I handed out shopping out shopping diaries to 7 of my peers to gain insight into their shopping motives. The entries in the shopping diaries were mostly about food. But they also showed how circumstantial influences – such as location – lead to buying decisions.

In a workshop afterwards, we dove deeper into the individual experiences of the participants. One of them explained how, when she would go to the supermarket, the offerings and environment would sometimes distract her and she would end up buying things she didn’t plan for and not buying what she needed for her recipes.

Discovery

We started the redesign process by asking stakeholders what wasn’t working with the initial version of Customers. For this redesign process we had weekly, later bi-weekly, feedback sessions in our team to present findings.

Discovery

This suggests consumers’ decisions can be influenced by the environment the decision is being made in. And in online shopping consumers can indulge in an even wider range of products with less inhibition. According to their shopping goals, motives and situations, consumers may be more or less likely to be influenced by their shopping environment. But it can and does have a significant effect on consumers.

Understanding behaviour

There are two systems that psychologists and neurologists describe to help make sense of such behaviours: the Automatic System and the Reflective System. These systems describe how we think as we engage with the world around us and how we deal with challenges and problems.

The Automatic System is our default way of thinking, performing tasks and solving problems that we are mostly unaware of. The Reflective System steps in whenever the automatic system can't solve a problem. Thaler & Sunstein describe the Automatic and the Reflective System in their book “Nudge” as follows:

“When you duck because a ball is thrown at you unexpectedly, or get nervous when your airplane hits turbulence or smile when you see a cute puppy, you are using your Automatic System.”

“We use the Reflective System when we are asked, ‘How much is 411 times 37?”

(Thaler & Sunstein, 2008: p. 21-22)

Solving this mathematical problem takes time and effort as well as the retrieval of previously learned mathematical calculation models from memory. The Automatic System is most likely what makes consumers susceptible to environmental influences and thus more likely to buy impulsively.

Therefore this work explores two ideas: What would online shopping look like if it was shaped from the consumer's perspective? And what would online shopping look like if it engaged with the Reflective System?

Internet sales as a percentage of total sales (ratio) (UK)

Search results for "desk chair" (otto.de)

Approach

In pursuit of answering these questions the approach concerns itself with the consumer's search for a product – from expressing a need to choosing an available option. Comparably, in existing online shops this would start with a search input, followed by a results page that leads to a product page.

Because this approach centres around consumer needs, the search can be regarded as finding a solution for a problem. Seeing the search process as a problem-solving process provides the opportunity to borrow concepts from other areas of expertise.