ISEEK's DakShub E-Commerce
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My Project Journey
This is a multi-semester project where my team and I spent researching the users and various aspects of website design that is required for building an inclusive website for people of various backgrounds. By the end of the semester, we were in the ideation stage. The next stage of this process involves evaluating and testing the designs with the target population. |
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Project Overview
We worked with the Institute for Social Empowerment through Entrepreneurship and Knowledge, referred to as ISEEK, for the Krannert School of Management team and developing an e-commerce website for Project Saksham. We were in charge of designing the e-commerce website (Dakshub) which is the forefront of the Saksham project. This is the channel in which consumers all over the world will be able to purchase goods and support the businesses developed through the project. |
Problem Statement
The current e-commerce website developed by ISEEK for Project Saksham does not have a fluid, culturally neutral, and accessible site [dakshab.com] design.” |
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Establishing Key Audiences
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Investors
Theses are the individuals who are giving donations to ISEEK or investing in specific companies from the initiative. |
Companies
These are the people who are selling and producing goods that are advertised on the website. |
Customers
These individual are the ones purchasing goods from the website. |
General Users
These individual may not have a specific task in mind but are just browsing through which could include potential customers and investors as well. |
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Research Areas
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Icons & Design Strategies
The users of this site will be from many different cultures and socio-economic status. The sponsor emphasized to our team a lot that it is very important for the website to be universal, accessible and culturally neutral. This is why a big portion of our research went into researching shapes, colors, pictures, etc. |
Information Architecture
There is a lot of information that is needed to put onto this website. It will serve as an e-commerce site as well as information site for the initiative. Therefore, it is important for us to thoroughly research how to structure the website so that it flows well and is easy to use. |
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Research Methods
To get the full picture of everything we are dealing with in this project, we did both primary research and secondary research. Vertical Divider
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Secondary Research
The main purpose of this was to gain a better understanding of the research topics. We looked into information such as e-commerce evaluation and web testing methods, icon design on computer interfaces, designing interfaces for low-literacy users, cultural interpretations of visual meanings and icons, etc. Through this we were able to create surveys and make more informative design decisions for the website. |
Survey
The main purpose of the surveys is to understand how the difference in culture and background affect how individuals view and interpret different things. The three topics that were tested in the surveys are icons, word association and color. We were able to get results from two types of audiences; students (general users) and individuals from India (potential business owners/companies). |
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Amazon
- Organization of large amount of data - Search bar filter |
OverStock
- Error prevention feature |
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Personas
To reflect our understanding of our users, we build user persons in order to validate our design decisions against during the design process. Vertical Divider
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Business Owners
What do they want? > Build a successful business > Sell products internationally > Financially stabilize family Frustrations > People underestimate their potential > Not having access to basic resources |
Investors
What do they want? > Manage company > Make a difference > Explore the world Frustrations > Slow & Inefficient methods > Close minded people > Following the norm without any thought |
Customers
What do they want? > Buy quality products > Support under-privileged individuals Frustrations > Unreliable product qualities > Not creating a difference |
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Site Map (Information Architecture)
This shows the layout of the website pages within the e-commerce website. We decided to separate the three sections from the get-go because different audiences will be interested in different content of the website. For example, the general users would be using the e-commerce aspect of the site the most, while investors would be in the "Donation" pages. |
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Wireframes
From the sketches that each of the team members made, we looked at the strengths and weaknesses of each design to combine into a better design. From there, digital mock-ups were created for better visualizations for the client as well as future testings. |
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