1Buy1 is a group project by Rolly, Emily, and Darcy. It's a brand-new shopping website that uses AI to make the shopping experience smarter and easier. We focus on electronics, and our goal is to help you quickly find the perfect product without wasting time. Our team, three product designers sucefully enhanced shoppers' decision-making using the 1BUY1.
Customers took too much time in finding and comparing the products they need, leading to frustration and a less efficient shopping experience.
For the research, we'll start with a competitive analysis to study how other platforms work and their pros and cons. Then, we’ll talk to users to understand their needs and create persona. After that, we’ll map out the user flow and information architecture for our site. Finally, we’ll test prototypes to see what works best.
In the research plan, we also synthesized research questions which will guide us in the research process.
We explored how e-commerce platforms handle product comparisons and integrate AI assistance into the shopping experience.
We evaluated via various approaches, including detailed comparison tables featuring price, ratings, and additional tools like "similar items" recommendations. In terms of AI assistance, we found its presence to be minimal across these platforms. While AI is primarily used for generating product recommendations, it is rarely utilized for advanced features like enhanced searching or product comparison tools.
Our findings highlight a significant gap: most platforms lack the flexibility to allow users to compare products across different brands or categories. Instead, comparisons are often confined to items within the same brand or series, limiting the user's ability to make well-informed purchasing decisions.
The interiewees are ranging from 21-27 years old, mostly from digital related field. And here are some insights we synthesized from interviews.
With this, we decided to design an online electronic products shopping platforms for PC with seamless, AI-powered features that enhance user decision-making without overwhelming them.
Focus on offering flexible comparison tools, particularly for electronic and home appliances, while ensuring AI integration feels intuitive and supports users in real-time without disrupting their natural browsing behavior.
We also did a crazy 8 sketches which help us quickly brainstorming possible solutions for those key features.
For examples, we tried to structure the AI assistant in different positions to see which one works better for usersThis step helps us explore different layouts and interactions before prototyping.
Homepage
We put the search bar at the top and give users two options:
1. They can either do normal search (type in the name of the product)
2. or AI Smart Search (allows you input a prompt, you may include any features like price, size, or color of the product, or even just a broad sentence).
And on the right side of the page, we design a AI suggestion module, which allows AI to give you shopping suggestions based on shopping history and personal profile.
Browse
When you search something, you will see the product list and its filters on the top. You will also be able to recall the AI Chatbot which you can ask for any information related to products.
Select + Compare
When the product list appears, we design a star shape on the top right of the product’s picture and user will be able to mark the product they wanna compare by check the star.
For the compare page, there will be AI suggestion appear automatically on the right side of the interface, helping you summarize the key difference of the product and compare certain parameters of the product.
We researched on different color palettes and finally chose this light green color as our primary color and bright blue as action.
For the logo design, we want to convey the concept that we’re a smart ai electronics shopping platform and to emphasize the advanced ai technology. So we choose the use gradient color.
One main change here is that we deleted the ai chatbot and combined normal search with smart search.
When the user wishes to search some product, the user can simply click on the search bar, our system will inform them that they can type like the sample prompt. For example, the user types “I want a macbook pro”, our ai smart search will automatically analyze the information you type in, recognize the product, and give you related filters.
The observation mainly focused on user navigation and how they interact with the platform, especially smart search and comparison function, and to see if they have any pain points or barriers.
Later, we mainly asked these research questions ourselves:
1. How easily can users navigate and complete tasks on improved e-commerce platform?
2. What are users' initial reactions and overall satisfaction with improved e-commerce platform?
3. Are there any specific pain points or barriers that hinder users' task completion?How does the interface support or hinder user understanding and decision-making?
Then, we came up with the synthesis.
Through this class (User Experience Research & Design) project, we’ve enhanced our UI design skills, expanded our knowledge of UX design and research, and gained expertise in identifying user pain points through structured methodologies. We’ve effectively applied our UX design skills to address these challenges and create user-centered solutions.
For our future work, we aim to enhance our AI-powered smart search functionality to make it more robust and efficient. Additionally, we plan to deploy our platform on mobile devices to increase accessibility and reach a more diverse user base.