The Challenge
By offering the ability to interact, visualize and customize furniture down to the last detail, a new level of personalization for users takes place before they make the purchase. The objective of the leadership was to turn the process of buying quality interiors from chore to a happy experience.
Building an intelligent solution, supplemented with technology required to be designed in a way such that it could be intuitive and simple for the users to engage with. It was a challenge to both maintain the brand consistency while creating a solution that could custom appeal to the homemakers and interior decorators.
Our Methodology
Drawing from our expertise and experience in user-centered design our teams were agile and upfront in understanding the unique challenges and requirements from Godrej. Based on stakeholder meetings and the product requirement articulated we worked on to formulate a common vision, strategies and design directions.
1. Laying the foundation
The first step was to generate a comprehensive information architecture categorizing, labeling and organizing the information in a cohesive layout based on the insights from user profiling and competitive analysis.
2. Building Navigation Concepts
Key navigation concepts were differentiated on the basis of how to group information best, categorized across trending, cataloging or mood-based styles and matching the same with user journeys. It served the objective of allowing users to navigate most intuitively.
3. Wireframing
It was essential to determine what information to show the users at different levels of hierarchies making way for internal whiteboarding brainstorming sessions. The output led to the creation of wireframes for all different modules.
4. Finalizing Visual concepts
Creating a cohesive experience and building a common design language easily understood by the users we opted for a unified visual design system choosing themes, color palettes to give prominence to the brand language and sensibilities of the users, which needed to be highlighted.
Key features
1. Creating a seamless experience
Think Design ensured the seamless integration of the three interaction modules.
- Interaction Table: Where users create a layout of their home and select furniture for it.
- Explore wheel: Where users get an introduction to the service and a glimpse of the portfolios.
- Color visualizer: Where users select a comprehensive color theme for the interiors based on the Previous choices.
2. Visual design
The theme of the design was made to be very playful to add a lighter vein to the process of designing a home. The palette complemented the brand language of Godrej and that reflected in the interface design for the modules. The idea was also to cater to the sensibilities of the homemakers who tend to be influencers in the areas of decor.
3. Character through Iconography
Iconography played an important role in the project. The use of clean and vibrant looking icons added the required dimensions of fun, along with acting as handy visual clues throughout the process aiding the user journey in their interior selection.
DESIGN ACTIVITIES
UX and UI Design, Visual & Interaction Design, Style Guide, Dev. Coordination.
Current status
An interactive ‘co-creation’ platform for home decor was launched by Godrej Interio in April 2014. It provides an intuitive and engaging ‘design customization’ which combines customer ideas with Godrej’s furniture design and execution expertise.
