Enso Eyewear
Project Type: Freelance Project
Role: Product Designer
Tools: Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop
Enso is an app designed to connect users with an aggregated collection of eyewear from the world’s best boutique brands. Enso would allow a user to find their preferred style, along with the customizations they need at the best possible price.
Project Goals:
The goals for creating this app are as follows;
Building a platform to help users navigate their purchases might encourage more confident decisions to improve the online shopping experience for millennials.
Ensuring the user finds the best fit when purchasing frames from brands they’re unfamiliar with.
Finding the motivations and pain points of how millennials use e-commerce apps for their purchases.
Research the current competitors & improve the current Information Architecture (IA) for a seamless experience.
Discovery of the problem space…
Turning a personal struggle into a viable solutionProblem Space
Millennials are experiencing higher rates of not having access to affordable and trustworthy designated places to buy sunglasses, prescription glasses and contact lenses
Objective
To provide millennials with an effective and accessible way to purchase eyewear (frames/lenses) they need with the customizations needed at the best price.
Primary Research
Identifying the Problem Space
About 55% of Canadians wear eyeglasses as their primary means of vision correction today. First, there are simply more people needing vision correction due to health-related issues, and second, and more importantly, an increased demand for stylish glasses.
However, despite being commonplace, glasses are notorious
for having excessive costs; in 2019, Vox published an article highlighting the excessive markups of designer label glasses, with some markups going as high as 1000% (Vox 2019).
With an increase in demand, variety, and an excessively high cost of purchase users can feel overwhelmed when it comes
to buying eyewear.
RESEARCH PLAN
Devising a plan to learn about the specific target marketGoal and Objective
To find out the motivations and pain points of how millennials currently use e-commerce applications for their purchases. As well as connecting them with resources that fit their needs.
Participant Criteria
Millennials (ages 25–38) who require eyeglasses and are currently focused on building their full-time career, are
tech-savvy and use some form of social platform to connect. Individuals with an unmistakable fascination for style. Fashion enthusiasts know about the most recent trends and are frequently the first among their companions to attempt
another style.
Method and Tools
Interviews (30 mins) were conducted in person, over the telephone, and via online survey.
Constraints
Interviews were conducted with only 5 users due to limitations of time and demographic access. My findings were based on this limited population.
Secondary Research
Interview SynthesisI conducted user interviews as well as online surveys to gather quantitative as well as qualitative data. The goal of the user interviews was to better interpret the problems faced by millennials to assess their shopping experience when purchasing eyewear both in-store and online. I dug deeper into the problem space trying to narrow down the areas that warranted a need for a solution.
Here are the findings from the interview.
Users did not go to the store intentionally.
Users were thinking of purchasing eyewear but were not in a rush.
Users do not know what they want.
Users take a day to purchase glasses while some take more than a month.
Project Assumptions
Narrowing the scope of the project and
hypothesizing how I can approach this problemIf we tracked users interactions within the product we will create a more personalized, meaningful experience.
If content was co-created by our users, it would make our product more participatory and inclusive to all.
If we made it easier for users to know what’s changed since their last visit, they’d come back more frequently.
If we made using personal devices (tablet/mobile) a more communal experience users wouldn’t feel isolated in a social environment.
“How might we provide those in need of eyeglasses, with the frames they want with the customizations they need at the best price?”
COMPETITOR RESEARCH
Luxottica Group is an Italian eyewear conglomerate and the world's largest company in the eyewear industry. Luxottica handles the design, manufacturing, distribution, and retail of its eyewear brands. Merger with Essilor; a French-based international optics company that designs, manufactures, and markets lenses to correct or protect eyesight. EssilorLuxottica is newly formed and controls major stakes in the
optical industry.
Competitive Analysis – Eyewear Brands (Worldwide)
Persona & Experience Map
In order to arrive at a viable solution that will alleviate pain points of the desired target group, it was important to create a persona & experience map from the insights based on the interviews.
Persona – Erin Tate
Experience Map
Based on the personas & insights from the research, I created an experience map to better interpret Erin’s end-to-end experience purchasing eyewear, the highs and lows she experienced, and areas of opportunity to help alleviate some tension.
User Journey
There's a simple system for complex problems it's based on the understanding that:
A user journey contains static information and actions.
We want to understand the journey before designing screens.
I wanted something visual. I find listing out the information in a document boring. Flowcharts are great, but they don't contain enough detail. Instead, I create something I call a see/do document.
For every screen or component, list:
What can the user see?
What can the user do?
Each thing the user can do, the action, can be linked to another see/do block. E.g. the "add to cart" button on a product page block links to a cart block, the "continue to checkout" button links to the shipping block, etc. Some actions link to very simple blocks, where there is only static information, signaling the end of that branch of the journey. Sometimes the simpler the approach, the better. It lets you get your thoughts out quickly and transition to the design phase earlier.
Visual Design
Enso is derived from the Japanese word that translates to ‘circle’. The design is meant to be an abstract interpretation of the human eye, which also illustrates the golden ratio proportions. As the design comes to completion, the result resembles a monocle or even an iris.
The Japanese word for circle is enso. It is a universal expression of wholeness that lives deep in our beings. The making of a circle with one brushstroke is a calligraphic practice of bringing that wholeness forth, through the gesture of the body, into form on the page.
Every Brand Needs a Logo
Here’s a snapshot of the logo development process:
Generated a list of names, ultimately landing on Enso
Sketched out a few different iterations
Iterated versions in Illustrator until the logo depicted the feeling I was trying to convey
It’s as important as how the world sees you. Your personal brand lives beyond your business card, a thank you note and even your social network. It’s the memory you leave with those whose hands you have shaken or even with those who simply admire you from afar - it is the stylized and crafted statement of who you are.
Typography Examples – Searching for a typeface that gives the user an approachable tone.
With regards to typography, I chose Quicksand because it portrayed the creative, yet professional feeling of the brand. It also provided enough weights for me to use to create contrast and hierarchy. The rounded terminals along with the curvaceous design on this typeface create a feeling of new, approachable, and openness. Quicksand harmonically matches with modern and upbeat designs.
Recognizing that my app was heavy with imagery that the user would be interacting with, I went with a monochromatic colour palette. I extracted a more toned hue of blue to convey the creative feel of the brand. To complement that, I chose a muted shade of blue to balance it out, which would be used as an accent.
High Fidelity Prototype
Primary Task Flow
After designing the visual identity, I began designing the high-fidelity prototype. Designed as per iOS guidelines, below is the latest high-fidelity prototype. Erin can sign up, and snap a photo for reference. Following this, she can be notified of the results, customize lenses/frames, and process payment.
1) The primary task flow would be uploading a photo or entering in preferences for frame type - (like a Shazam for eyewear) that searches the web and then presents results.
2) The secondary flow would be to customize the lens/frames and get the best price available web-wide.
PRIMARY TASK FLOW – User taps ‘Enter’ and signs in through the ‘Login Page’ to get to the ‘Home’ page and then the ‘Camera Icon’ and arrives in the camera page.
PRIMARY TASK FLOW – User snaps photo and then a suggestion is provided and is able to filter through the selections.
PRIMARY TASK FLOW – Customize lens/frames and get the best price
PRIMARY TASK FLOW – Customize lens/frames and get the best price
PRIMARY TASK FLOW – Customize lens/frames and get the best price
Final Prototype
Conclusion
This 10-week project forced me to learn and adhere to the design process: UX research methods, creating key artifacts, following iOS Human Interface Guidelines, and user testing. If I were to redo this project, I would improve my questions for the user interviews. There is an opportunity for me to craft the dialogue during interviews to be more of a conversation and to dig deeper into some pain points, motivations, and behaviours.
My next steps are to once again test! I plan to review my final prototype with target users to see if the design makes sense and if it truly fits their needs. This will help build a stronger case for my project and it is also great to get feedback from people who will actually be using the app if it were out in
the market.
Experiencing the whole design process, I am now able to understand the value of each step and how they can be leveraged and planned in order to manage my next project with different constraints.