BUILDING AN ATTRACTIVE E-COMMERCE PLATFORM Information Studies Master’s Thesis Project author: Project supervisor: Lauri Seppälä Mette Skov Number of pages: 60 Submission date: 146 275 characters with spaces June 2020 Preface Nowadays, the ever growing number of internet users is driving more and more businesses towards online solutions and especially, for those who are in the market for selling products, towards e-commerce implementations. Though, for these businesses to differentiate from one another and thrive towards success they should be able to do more than simply copy- paste already existing concepts. Instead, these new e-commerce websites could benefit from focusing on user experience and usability over traditional designs and functionalities. New web-based projects fail all the time because they are unable to overcome these initial steps of differentiation, which is why HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and usability practitioners who seek to understand these issues are becoming more and more necessary Keywords: contextual design, web usability, persuasive technology, behaviour change. 1 Introduction 4 The project 4 Problem area 4 Problem description 4 Problem formulation 5 Delimitations 5 Project structure 6 Theory and Methodology 7 User-centered Design 7 Contextual Design 8 The Cool Concepts 8 Contextual Design Models 10 Web Usability 11 Principles of Web Usability 12 Persuasive Technology 14 Behaviour Change 15 Understanding the Decision-making 16 Ethical Considerations 18 Data Collection Methods 19 Interviews 20 NVivo 20 Research 20 Contextual Inquiry 21 Interpretation Session 23 NVivo 24 Data Consolidation 25 The Affinity Diagram 25 Contextual Design Models 28 The Day-in-the-Life Model 29 The Identity Model 37 The Sequence Model 44 Ideation 49 Creativity 50 The Wall Walk 50 Visioning 51 Evaluation of initial ideas 51 Combined product concept 54 Home page 54 Catalogue page 55 Product page 57 2 Shopping cart page 58 Account page 59 The Cool Drilldown 60 Design 61 Mock-ups 62 Applying the Persuasive Technology 65 Ethical analysis 71 Validation 72 Discussion 74 The customized Contextual Design process 74 The next steps 74 Reflections on ethics 75 Conclusion 75 References 77 Appendices 79 3 Introduction This project describes the research, ideation and design processes for creating an attractive e-commerce platform. The main steps included in the process as well as the accompanying methods have been thoroughly investigated and examined within the scope of this project. The project This project has been conducted without an external collaboration partner. The decision has been made in order not to place unnecessary limitations for the project scope and the underlying methodology which has a big focus on creating innovative solutions. The e- commerce platform created during this project is an abstract multi-brand solution concentrating on the clothing industry. The project primarily follows a design process called Contextual Design while concepts from other theories, such as the web usability and persuasive technologies, have been applied. Contextual Design is a design process normally requiring a minimum number of two or three team members. In this project though, the process has been tackled with a one man team which has presented a unique set of obstacles and issues. The whole process consists of three phases: research, ideation and design being preceded by an introduction to the theories and methodologies used. In the scope of this project, questions regarding the use of Contextual Design without a team, the resulting personalized process and the collaboration of Contextual Design with web usability - and persuasive technology principles have been tried to be resolved. Problem area This chapter explains the problem description and the related problem formulation. Furthermore, the delimitations for the project have been presented as well as the project structure. Problem description Nowadays, the ever growing number of internet users is driving more and more businesses towards online solutions and especially, for those who are in the market for selling products, towards e-commerce implementations. Though, for these businesses to differentiate from one another and thrive towards success they should be able to do more than simply copy- paste already existing concepts. Instead, these new e-commerce websites could benefit from focusing on user experience and usability over traditional designs and functionalities (Deng & Poole, 2012) New web-based projects fail all the time because they are unable to overcome these initial steps of differentiation, which is why HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and usability practitioners who seek to understand these issues are becoming more and more necessary (Wilson, 2010). The research from Lavie and Tractinsky (2004) has found out that the users of websites care not only about the task efficiency of the website but also about the aesthetics justifying the 4 importance for a well grounded design-research process. Furthermore, they suggest that the aesthetics relate to the users’ overall perception of the usability as it comes to these websites, contributing towards a more well-rounded user experience. Then, what would an e-commerce platform look like if it was designed by prioritizing usability and user experience over more traditional ways? According to Hotlzblatt (2016, p. 4) “To be successful in today’s world, those who define and build hardware and software systems must know how to fit them into the fabric of everyday life”. A system cannot be designed solely based on a singular activity but rather as part of the whole work practice and the everyday lives of the users. Furthermore, the system should bring the users joy and coolness while using it (Holtzblatt, 2016). According to Menon and Kahn (2002) the aesthetics of the website can directly affect the user behaviour in both negative and positive ways. The question then is, how can a newly launched e-commerce service gain attraction within the masses and make them try it as well as keep coming back for a longer period of time? Fogg (2003) writes that computer systems have multiple advantages over human persuaders in these kinds of situations such as the abilities of being more persistent, managing more data, and scaling easier than their human counterparts. Unfortunately though, these topics are usually riddled with unethical practices as many websites do almost anything imaginable in order to push their services and products to the unsuspecting victims. Davis (2009, p. 1) writes that “There is good reason to be concerned about information technology that is intended to change people’s behaviour”. Even when the technology designed for us helps us accomplish things, if they change our behaviour, the ethical questions should be considered and evaluated. This project aims to answer the aforementioned questions with the help of Contextual Design mixed alongside a set of persuasive technology principles, based on the chosen literature, ending up to a user evaluated design for a new possible e-commerce site. Furthermore, the ethical considerations will be discussed as related to the chosen persuasive technology principles. As is with Contextual Design, The research will be heavily based on qualitative data collection methods. Problem formulation The project builds around and aims to find answers for the following three problem questions: What are the pros and cons of using Contextual Design while not being part of a team? How to tailor the Contextual Design process for building an attractive e-commerce? How can the principles of web usability and persuasive technology improve an e-commerce platform? Delimitations In 2019, clothes and sports goods were ranked as the most popular online products and services for both genders (64% of women and 56% of men) in Great Britain (Most Popular Online Goods by Gender Great Britain 2019, n.d.). For this reason, the e-commerce website 5 designed during this project will be focusing on the online clothing market, targeting both men and women users. Furthermore, the stage of the designs as ended up within this project will not be considered to fit one purpose or one company for which reason the brand value of the website and the company strategies, budgets and anything included will not be discussed in the making. Also, because of not focusing on any single brand or company, the website will be considered as a multi-brand offering service, meaning that it could be able to provide and sell clothes from various distributors. This decision is also backed up by statistics showing that most of the biggest fashion e-commerce companies in the world in 2019 were multi-branded (Top Fashion E-Commerce Companies by Market Cap 2019, n.d.). Additional content of the website, including specific functionalities and services, will be chosen during the research and based on the gathered data and findings. While often thought to be a solely team based process, this project uses Contextual Design altered for the purposes of an individual researcher. For this reason, some of the more “team-strict” areas of the methodology, such as the Interpretation Session, have been modified to fit such requirements. Additionally, no case partner has been chosen for the project as the vision of the outcome is to be purely based on the research, findings and innovation conducted during the process. As it usually happens, collaboration with external parties in such cases comes with requirements and limitations which goes directly against the principles of Contextual Design. Because of time limitations, the final outcome of the project will not be presented as a fully functional website but instead as high-level designs, which will be evaluated with target users at the end of the design phase. Furthermore, the project does not include the use of Contextual Design, web usability principles and the chosen persuasive technology principles throughout the whole process but rather in separate stages. The beginning of the project is reserved to go through all the main steps of the Contextual Design process before moving on to applying the additional elements and changes based on both the web usability - and persuasive technology principles.