IKEA Store App (Redesign)

Graduate Student Group Project 

The primary project for IMSE 577 was to redesign the UX and UI of a chosen product. Our team choose the IKEA Store Mobile Application.

This redesign concept was created only as a educational exercise and is not an official redesign of the IKEA Store application.

Initial Research Phase

Due to the limited timeframe of the class, our team could not completely redesign all functions of the application. Instead, we focused our redesign on the most prominent intended functions of the app. These are the store locator, deals showcase, and shopping list functions. Based on these functions, we created 5 tasks, later reduced to 3, for us to break down through an informal task analysis and user testing. The final tasks were

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1. Set and Check your Store Hours 
2. Create a shopping list with candles, a chair, and a table 
3. Check if there are any deals on kids beds

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Additionally, User Stories and Personas were created to add context for these tasks. For the user testing, 5 participants used think-aloud testing and were rated on a scale from 1 to 4 on how successful they were at completing the task (1 being total success to 4 being a total failure). From our user testing and informal task analysis, we discovered issues with observability, discoverability, and predictability of features within the application in several key areas.

Initial Design Phase

Our team worked to address the issues discovered via testing that included improving visual clarity, visual indicators, phrasing, and information architecture structure. The prototype was created and tested via Adobe XD.

Version 1 of the IKEA Store Redesign Prototype

Prototype Testing Phase

Our team utilized three methods of analysis to discover issues with our redesign. First, We had several experts review the app via heuristic evaluation. Second, we utilized the same three tasks for testing the original application for our redesign (both in-person using think-aloud and remotely without think-aloud). Third, those who tested both the original and redesign completed a System Usability Scale (SUS) Survey, allowing us to compare usability scores. It should be noted that, during this phase of the project, restrictions due to quarantine came into effect and did have an impact on the scope of our research.

Final Design Changes

While SUS Scores indicated that there was a substantial improvement with the redesign compared to the original, there were still improvements to be made from our other findings. Quite a few changes were made to improve the versatility of the redesign. Users wanted to complete the same tasks in different ways. For example, version 1 of the redesign had the “Deals & Steals” button only on the homepage, but users indicated a desire for that feature to be available on the products page as well.

Version 1 of the Redesigned Products Page (Left) to Version 2 (Right)

There was also a major addition in the form of adding an onboarding process to the redesign. Onboarding is featured in the original app but was removed to allow our team to focus on the core of the application. However, users struggled with understanding the intent of the application, which is to create a list for products but not buy them directly. This was an issue with the original application as well, and we attempted to address this by adding hints throughout the application to indicate to users the scope of functionality. While this did help, it wasn’t enough. As a result, our team reintroduced the onboarding process with appealing visuals and shorts prompts to keep users engaged but not overwhelmed.

Onboarding Process for Final Prototype