Class Hub

Background

At Wayfair, I was a Product Designer on Wayfair’s enterprise product design team. We designed product catalog systems, and I was the design lead in Merchandising, reporting to the Design Manager. The Class Hub is the content management platform that powers Wayfair.com and is one of many application suites designed on Wayfair’s intranet.

My Role

I was responsible for spearheading the design process. My primary collaborators were three product managers, one engineering lead, and multiple business stakeholders from our supply chain. I worked closely with merchandising employees, my media and merchandising design team, and Homebase, our design systems team.

Discovery

During our user research, we talked with various teams involved in the merchandising supply chain. These teams consisted of people who had management, operations, and more specialized roles. They expressed their desire for an experience that is easy to understand, accessible, and empowering. The image below is one of several artifacts from this research phase.

Methods Used:

• Hypothesis Definition (OKR, KPI, Value Proposition)

• User and Stakeholder Interviews

• Platform Planning

• Landscape Research

• Card Sort

• Data Architecture Review

• Quarterly to Long View Planning

• Paper Sketching

Concept exploration

During the planning phase, we defined what tasks our software should do and drew rough page designs. I used a method to create a good design by starting with big ideas and then adding smaller details gradually. We used drawings and diagrams to update how users move around the Class Hub site. This helped the team easily use the site to reach their goals. I design pages by organizing content into sections, creating maps, and using consistent styles. The aim is to make the site user-friendly by aligning with how people intuitively operate. All tools must be easy for users to grasp. Our research showed that people have a common work pattern, so workflows should reflect this reality. That's why, when drawing sketches, we thought about where users would look and how they would use different parts of the screen for various tasks.

Methods Used:

• Design Studio

• Whiteboarding

• Information Architecture Ideation

• Prototyping

• Design Reviews

Design & Prototyping: visualizing to understand further

During the design phase, our primary objective was to meticulously craft a prototype that could undergo comprehensive testing by non-managerial and managerial Merchandisers. We wanted to ensure that the design catered to the needs and preferences of individuals at various levels within the organization.

Methods Used:

• Wireframing (Sketch)

• Prototyping (InVision)

Usability Testing: observing to learn

Our objective in conducting testing is to thoroughly evaluate user engagement with a prototype via usability assessments. Participants are assigned specific tasks within scenarios for execution, and we analyze their pre- and post-task anticipations. Valuable insights are collected by employing a rating scale ranging from 0 to 5, allowing us to refine usability by focusing on user behaviors and anticipated outcomes.

Methods Used:

• Moderator Guide

• Research Planning

• Usability Testing

• Guerilla Testing

• UAT Consulting

Results

The tool is now live! It was released to Wayfair’s merchandisers.