SSENSE Redesign

2023
Main project image
TIMELINE
May - June 2023 [8 Weeks]
PROJECT TYPE
Human Centered Information System, Information Architecture, Heuristic Evaluation, Prototyping
MY ROLE
Information Architect, UX Designer

The online luxury fashion retailer SSENSE's website lacks accessibility consideration (low contrast, small font sizes, etc.), is insufficient organized, and attempts to be multi-purposed given its combination of ecommerce and editorial sections.

In adherence to SSENSE’s minimalist aesthetics, the site contains its main global navigation into only four navigational links: “Menswear”, “Womenswear”, “Everything Else”, and “Search” (Figure 1); however, these links prevent users from previewing the choices embedded within these options, subsequently forcing them to commit to a certain category before knowing the products contained within. As such, the site would benefit from a reorganisation of these four links within its global navigation, expanding them to provide additional options to the user upon entry into the site and as they navigate across it.

Current ssense.com global navigation and hero section, minimal global navigation options
Current ssense.com product page, lack of a customizable filtering system
Current ssense.com editorial page, inconsistent visual hierarchy and sizing for text and images

Card Sorting:

RedesignHybrid cart sort results
Redesign: Open card sort results
Redesign: Closed card sort results
Content Audit Report: ssense.com crawled with onpointsuite.ca
Heatmap Testing: generated by all users on one mean test, with the average "attention span and emotions" provided on a graph below each page.
Empathy Map: Aaron (persona) and his values based on user testing

Sitemap Redesign

Redesign: ssense.com site map navigation before (left) and after (right)
Redesign: user flow task sketch, add to cart and checkout pages
Redesign: user flow task sketch, viewing editorial articles from homepage

Redesign (Option 1): low fidelity homepage wireframe
Redesign (Option 2): low fidelity homepage wireframe (created in Balsamiq)
Redesign: high fidelity user task flow (annotated)