vendor of original movie props

Client

Prop Store

Status

Never launched

Story

4 min read | Written by a human

Don't scroll!

stage 01
setting the scene

world's leading vendors

scene 01 - context

Prop Store is one of the world's leading vendors of original props, costumes and related production materials from the television and cinema industries.
I was hired to manage and redesign the Prop Store website by the social media agency, ContentCal. Unfortunately, the project never launched. Despite 3+ months working on it, the budget was cut and my contract ended. It was tough but the mission was really insightful.

stage 02
rising action

years of service

Scene 01|05 - business objectives

- Increase the sales
- Increase registration
- Improve user experience
- Simplify the website

Scene 02|05 - user needs

A user-friendly website which is easy to navigate and where props can be found quickly.

Scene 03|05 - design problem

After years of service, it’s time for the website to be redesigned. The main goal is to simplify the website experience by making it more user-friendly, which will lead to an increased sales volume.

Scene 04|05 - user research

The SEO Team made research on the users through surveys & Google analytics. This research enabled us to have a better understanding of the user needs and to know how they interact with the website.
We also used the service Mouseflow, which is a website analysis tool that lets us replay visitor sessions and see heatmaps showing where visitors click, scroll, and pay attention.

Scene 05|05 - user personas

Based on this research, I created user personas to help identify who the users were and what needs they had.

Goals / Needs

- Investment
- Own something cool

Fears

- Authenticity?
- Lot of money to spend

Goals / Needs

- Rare acquisition
- Connect with their favourite movie
- Spontaneous purchase

Fears

- Authenticity?
- Lot of money to spend

Goals / Needs

- Obtaining rare piece
- Always interested in details of a product
- Investment

Fears

- Authenticity?
- Fear of regret

stage 03
climax

research & exploration

Scene 01|03 - research

For each feature and page that I was working on, I did plenty of research.
I analysed hundreds of websites and applications. The goal was to see how others solve similar problems and try to not go back to square one.

Scene 02|03 - sketch

Design exploration

Analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the website

Scene 03|03 - wireframes

- For each pages, creation of 3 proposals
- Presentation to my team and explanation
- Selection of the best one to present it to the client
- If the client is not so keen on the selected proposal, possibility to show him the other ones

stage 04
solving the problem

design

Scene 01|03 - 1st Round

The goal during the 1st round of the visual design exploration was to create 4 differentes proposals in 2 days. The final purpose of this exercise was to get feedback from everyone to help us to know if we are on good course.

Testing

What I learned

As we had a very short amount of time to create the proposals, I learned excellent time-management skills.
I also learned from my mistakes, even if some of my proposals were quite popular among the 2 teams, they were not the right proposals for Prop Store. Though at first I attempted to reinvent Prop Store, I soon learned that the client was much more inclined towards a finished product built in the image of the existing model. My ideas were too different from the original, and needed to change according to their wishes.
Now that I understood their vision more clearly, I was able to go ahead and deliver a proposal that was tailored more fittingly to their needs.

Scene 02|03 - 2nd Round

After the 1st round, the client decided to focus on one route. To keep improving it, I created 6 proposals in 2 days to explore this option.

Scene 03|03 - 3rd Round

In the 2nd round, the client remained interested in 2 proposals, so I tried my best to improve and develop them.

stage 05
(re)solution

fin

It was an interesting project for me and I really learned a lot through this experience. We went toward a “final” version after those multiple options. Unfortunately and until this day, it never has been implemented. However the screens were made so please feel free to enjoy my final version made for Prop Store

Thank you for reading!