🏡 Revamping a Community Centric Home Page
In an effort to increase Gen Z interest-based community engagement, Mercari launched an initiative to revamp their app home page. Partnering closely with a UX Designer, Product Manager, and Director of UX, I developed and executed on a rapid iterative testing and evaluation program to enable quick design feedback at a bi-weekly cadence. By conducting 24 moderated interviews in a span of 3 weeks, I enabled the team to iterate on designs with confidence, ultimately releasing a successful new home page in record time.
👩🏻💼 My Role
Senior UX Researcher
🥅 Project Goals
Revamp the app-home screen to improve awareness of and interactions with community spaces.
💭 Methods
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Desk Research
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Rapid Iterative Testing & Evaluation; moderated usability and concept testing
🗓️ Duration
3 weeks (2024)
📈 Impact
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Increased the number of user sessions within joined communities by 65%
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Increased the average number of comments per day per user by 14%
Outcome
Study Plan
Throughout the rapid testing schedule, I kept the study plan consistent. The outline included a series of tasks and questions regarding:
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Warm up: most recent Mercari experience
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Engagement and discovery: prototype exploration
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Comprehension: understanding of prototype and content
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Usability and findability: pass/fail of tasks
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Memory: what stuck?
Schedule
To maintain open lines of communication and collaboration across stakeholders, UX debriefs, and prototype iterations, the team followed a tight schedule.
Monday
🎨
Design Updates
Tuesday
🔬
Moderated Research
Wednesday
💬 🎨
Debrief & Design Updates
Thursday
🔬
Moderated Research
Friday
💬 🎨
Debrief & Design Updates
Sample of Round 1
💡Findings:
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Participants desired a horizontal scroll. When exploring and trying to interact with Design B, they expressed frustration with the static nature of each hashtag grouping.
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Participants were uncertain what would happen once the heart was tapped. Would it be pinned to the "For You" page? Save to "My likes"? Save to "Saved searches? Save to "Hashtags"?
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Participants wanted to see listing prices displayed upfront to reduce the effort required to click into each item. This would enable faster item skimming & mental filtering.
Design A
Sample of Round 2
🎨 Design Changes:
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"Comments" -> "Threads"
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Horizontal scroll for each hashtag community
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Prices added to each item thumbnail
💡 Findings:
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Small image sizes had low visual accessibility. Participants had trouble understanding what they were looking at.
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Participants were confused by "Threads". They were unsure if this referred to sub-categories within each hashtag, discussions, or something else entirely.
Design B
Sample of Round 3
🎨 Design Changes:
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Larger image sizes
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Heart icon -> Bookmark icon
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Metadata treatment
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"Hashtags" -> "Communities"
💡Findings:
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Participants mistook the bookmark icon to indicate the hashtag communities are saved searches. The community nature of each grouping was not apparent.
Design C
Sample of Round 4
🎨 Design Changes:
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Heart icon -> Bookmark icon -> Join CTA
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Metadata treatment
💡 Findings:
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The combination of communities terminology & the "Join" CTA improved comprehension of hashtag communities. Participants correctly understood what would happen if they joined a community.
Design D
📈 Impact
Within 1 month of releasing the new home page, we:
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Increased the number of user sessions within joined communities by 65%
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Increased the average number of comments per day per user by 14%
Original Home Page
New Home Page
💭 Reflections
👍 What went well
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Close collaboration with UX counterparts throughout testing and design iterations
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High level of user engagement throughout the design process to inform decision making
👎 Missed opportunities
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More standardized note-taking process for research observers