Maître du Jeu: not your usual ecommerce
Context
In 2023 my team and I envisioned an ecommerce for our UX design course. The initial intention was to prototype a regular website to sell new board games. But we quickly added more layers to the challenge: the ecommerce would also be a home for second-hand board games selling and buying, and a place-to-be for all board games lovers wanting to discover unreleased products. Really not your typical ecommerce!
My role
I led the team through market research, writing user personas and thinking about the information architecture and sitemap of the website. My previous experience as a marketer and my passion for organising helped us greatly. But what I loved most doing during this project was prototyping in Figma and gathering feedback on our wireframes so we could improve on our design.
Outcomes
We had a week to create an ecommerce from scratch, from concept to working prototype. At the end of the five working days, we had:
Created 14 designs affecting 8 screens;
Gathered feedback three times and made meaningful changes.
The process
1. Research
This step didn’t take long as the purpose of the exercise was to get to prototyping as quickly as possible. However, we did manage to analyse the websites of five competitors and work on Maître du Jeu’s unique selling point (USP).
2. Define
We worked on three user personas, each one wanting to use one particular feature the ecommerce would offer. We also thought about all the scenarios possible that would influence our design and help us in the next step of the process.
3. Ideate
The team and I brainstormed all the pages and features needed for the ecommerce, knowing it would need to buy new and second-hand products, but also allow users to sell their used board games. The final feature would be to subscribe to a discovery box for board games lovers. Once the brainstorm was completed, we organised all the information between the different navigations, pages and categories. We gathered feedback on the architecture and sitemap before moving on to the next step.
4. Design & Prototyping
Designing the wireframes, thinking about the user journey and improving the prototype after receiving feedback was by far my favourite part of the project. The team and I were dedicated to presenting two different versions of the ecommerce, explaining the design decisions that we made and how it would work as a whole.
What I’d do differently if I had more time
Users are central to the UX design process. Even if my team and I are board game lovers ourselves, it doesn’t mean we know everything there is to know about our target audience and how to make their lives easier. So, if I had more time, I would:
Interview board games players to understand what their pain points and needs are when it comes to buying and selling board games, before even starting to define the user personas;
Conduct user testing throughout the process of designing and prototyping, as the feedback we received was of our teacher and peers;
Reflect better on how to integrate the second-hand feature of the ecommerce, as this was the most complex to do.