Samsung Bespoke Kitchen Design Studio
Bringing to life a suite of customizable kitchen appliances in a premium experience. Playful, yet educational, this tool allows consumers to play before they buy while creating the kitchen of their dreams.
Role
UX Design
Client
Samsung
Firm
Razorfish
Duration
6 weeks
Team
Designer: Samuel Stringer-Hye
Product Manager: Jayna Hancock
Data Analyst: Sarah Hulsmann
Strategist: Kelly Sheehan
Service
Service
Service
Service
How might we create an environment that allows our customers to play, yet be educated on our Bespoke kitchen line of products?
Service
High fidelity prototypes by Samuel Stringer-Hye
MY ROLE
UX Designer
As an Sr. Experience Designer while at Razorfish, I created wireframes, user journeys and task flow artifacts for Samsung. I participated in creative iteration and strategy collaboration with our small but nimble team of lead designer, PM, content strategist and developers.
THE CHALLENGE
Expand the Bespoke customization tool to include a new line of appliances.
With an existing refrigerator customization tool already in place, we were tasked with expanding the Bespoke experience into a kitchen suite of appliances. Using learnings from data and user research to inform our design ideas, we sought out to create the ultimate dream kitchen customization tool.
Our high level goals were to:
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Empower the user to customize products and visualize through situational photography
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Provide enough product education that enables conversion
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Keep cohesion with the refrigerator customization tool yet improve the user experience
THE SOLUTION
A memorable and premium kitchen customization experience
Aligning with developer timing and restraints, we built a MVP customization experience that focused on an improved user experience, integrating three new appliances, new kitchen scenes and adding new colorways.
Our immediate challenges were:
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Understanding data from the refrigerator tool to inform design iterations
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Leveraging design patterns but improving the user experience
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Developing a MVP product within time and with developer constraints
Selection of wireframes
BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
Engagement through play
Objectives such as customization rates, add to cart and order rates were all part of our ongoing monitoring after the launch process to verify success. Along with quantitative kpi’s, product priorities were set to establish design guardrails.
DESIGN OBJECTIVES
Top priorities
Our design objectives guided us through everything from ux design to visual design. With clear and distinct focus, we were able to target our process with these key guardrails in place.
Established guardrails were:
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Must be subtly-guided process with no more than 5-8 options per choice
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Refrigerator is still king: Top performer and portray as most important appliance
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Must be dynamic, have user control and be ‘fun to play with’
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Should include relevant product details/images
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Must be a premium experience and visually cohesive to refrigerator tool
INSIGHTS & USER RESEARCH
Informing design through data
Leveraging data pulled from the existing refrigerator tool, we looked at some previous sessions with our users. Gathering shopper perceptions about the Bespoke configurator, it was important to balance between customization and curation on-going to the newest version of the tool.
User insights:
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Overall users felt the existing tool was easy to follow and visually appealing.
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It was fun to play with and enjoyed having multiple kitchen scenes, though they found them hard to find.
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There is a tipping point where too many choices becomes overwhelming. No more than 8 colors and 2 finish patterns.
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Current experience lacked enough key product details to make informed choices. Think about adding zoom functionality and more product details.
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Customization may feel excessive to some. Think about adding a curated collection for edge case users.
EXISTING SIGN UP FLOW
User feedback from existing refrigerator tool which informed next gen experience
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Guiding the user through a sea of options
Documenting the experience allowed our team to strategize how to create an efficient and streamlined user experience. It also allowed for understanding how our experience sat within the greater dot com flow. Creating user flows were an important part in identifying only critical elements to show during the product customization process. When collaborating with developers, the artifacts became critical in expressing intent of organization.
DISCOVERABILITY
How can users find our product?
Placing three different ways for our product to be discoverable, our users would have plenty of ways to find our product.
DESIGN PROCESS
Iteration for optimum result
Collaboration was integral between myself and the lead designer. My role during the design process was to create the wireframes of which the design would build off of. They went through multiple iterations of design and continued to be tweaked within the design phase. The use of design patterns were leveraged from the existing refrigerator experience to keep cohesion between the two products.
Our strategy was to implement this product into two phases, an MVP product (see below) and post-MVP product (see below) which implements a drawer pattern to better accommodate mobile usability.
MVP wireframes by Katie Miller
Post MVP wireframes by Katie Miller
High fidelity prototypes by Samuel Stringer-Hye
QA & TESTING
Staging our product
In partnership with our Samsung developers, we launched a staging site which was tested for usability and compatibility across devices. Our testing included multiple rounds of QA via Jira/Confluence tables and cross checks by the team.
CONCLUSION
Positive performance
Refrigerator, range and dishwasher were all tightly aligned on which appliance was customized the most and that Navy was the most popular color to customize with. Overall we exceeded our targets, we were pleased to find out that we surpassed our performance indicators and conversion rates.
Our results were:
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64% of all Samsung.com ref buyers converted through simulator
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Responsible for 1/3 of all US Samsung refrigerator sales
