Project Info
Goliath Games is an international game and toy company that creates products for all ages. Their online platform is outdated, difficult to navigate, and generally not visited. My task was to redesign the flow and user experience of the site on both mobile and PC platforms. It was important that the branding stay on point but overall the site needed more focused hierarchy as well as a more simplified and elegant way to demonstrate their products.
(( Please click the images to see higher resolution versions ))
The Research
Starting off I needed to get an idea of what the scope of the project should be. With only 4 weeks to complete the project my research time was limited so I chose to focus primarily on competitor research and prospective user interviews.
Competitors
Goliath has many competitors so I narrowed the scope to the five largest and most successful companies.
Interviews
You can never have enough interviews but with such a short turnaround time I kept it to only 4. I was able to gather some valuable insight as well as confirm a couple hypotheses I had to help me create my persona.
Persona
Based on my research I was able to welcome Josh to the team. And with his help I was able to move forward to the planning and design phases of the project.
The Design
Goliath's original website had a lot of the functionality it needed to compete with other major companies, but it lacked a good flow and certain design decisions were confusing or hard to navigate. So I began with creating a site map as well as a potential user flow to help navigate what was missing and what needed to be adjusted.
After that was set it was time to sketch, wireframe and prototype. This part was what took the longest and I may have been a little over ambitious with where I wanted to take the site, but I'm happy with how it came out.
Testing & Iteration
Now that the high fidelity designs were created and the prototypes set up it was time to test the design and figure out how well my research and planning had paid off.
User Testing
Although I wish I nailed it on the first try, a few issues did arise during my user testing:
· Some had difficulty finding the link to purchase replacement parts (found in the footer only). I fixed this by adding it to the top menu as well.
· One participant mentioned the search bar's placeholder text was confusion as it only said "Search". To address this I changed it to give examples of different things users could search for.
· Another mentioned wishing they could see the prices of games. I originally intended to leave this out to prevent confusion as the site doesn't have e-commerce functionality, but in light of this I added MSRP to the product detail pages.
Challenges
The largest challenge of all was trying to find enough time in 4 weeks to create a responsive website design that was backed up by research and planning. Despite the difficult timelines I was able to pull through.
If I had more time I would have loved to have more research and more time to plan everything out beforehand. It would have also been nice to finish out more of the site if time allowed.
final Thoughts
Despite the stress involved in pushing this one over the finish line, I very much enjoyed getting to take a shot at the Goliath Games website. It definitely was in need of a little love and I feel that my design helps make it a place people would find both comfortable to use and a helpful tool to find their next game purchase.
final Product
Thank you for viewing this project. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out via the contact form above.