Joyful

Reimagining Jewelry
in the Digital Age

Role
Art director
UX/UI

Tools
Miro
Figma

Date
2021

Info

Jewelry retailers have long relied on traditional marketing and in-store shoppers, even when the rise of digital campaigns was already there. But in 2020, lockdown measures led to a decisive and dramatic shift in the business landscape, and jewelers needed to shift with it. 

The closure of brick-and-mortar shops meant that retailers needed to focus on engaging customers in new ways and on new channels. New digital solutions are now a top priority.

In my Master's degree in User Experience Design, we were challenged to imagine a digital solution for local businesses that were at risk due to pandemic measures. This is our proposal. 

Joyful

Reimagining Jewelry
in the Digital Age

Role
Art director
UX/UI

Date
2021

Tools
Miro
Figma

Info

Jewelry retailers have long relied on traditional marketing and in-store shoppers, even when the rise of digital campaigns was already there. But in 2020, lockdown measures led to a decisive and dramatic shift in the business landscape, and jewelers needed to shift with it. 

The closure of brick-and-mortar shops meant that retailers needed to focus on engaging customers in new ways and on new channels. New digital solutions are now a top priority.

In my Master's degree in User Experience Design, we were challenged to imagine a digital solution for local businesses that were at risk due to pandemic measures. This is our proposal.

.

—Discover

This project started with an initial phase of research and information gathering. In order to validate the problems we made quantitative research through surveys to final consumers and we also conducted several personal interviews to get qualitative information not only from consumers but also from professional jewelers.

We also dug into the jewelry industry to get to know their current challenges and what competitors were doing to face them.

At the end of this phase, we came up with some insights that would be always present in the next phases.

• Consumers trust local jewelers in terms of quality and warranty, but the face-to-face experience of buying in brick-and-mortar shops makes them feel kind of forced to purchase something although they aren’t completely sure about it.
  
  
• Jewelers find strong difficulties when reaching new consumers.
  
  
• Local jewelry is still the first option when talking about repairing or redesigning a piece. The current digital solutions for after-sales services don’t satisfy user needs and they don’t even trust completely on them.
  
  
• Today consumers are concerned about sustainability on jewelry although they don’t know exactly what the good practices are.

—Define

TARGET AUDIENCE

We prioritize the disconnection between retailers and new consumers as one of the main problems, at least in terms of communication. So we targeted a core audience of Generation Z and Millenials. 
We needed to meet them to get them closer. 

Characteristics

• Digital identity building: the digital environment is where and what they are.
• Globalization: They follow global trends and brands.
• Disbelief on the official: they don't trust the status quo anymore.
• Scarcity: Bad job conditions and economic uncertainty.

USER PERSONAS

We created user personas for three typical users for Joyful based on our research and the base of users we reached. For this we followed the methodology of extreme users. (If this was a bigger project we would want to validate this with more user interviews.) 

Then we created stories and user journeys, where our heroes (Eva, Alberto and Elsa) are facing a problem in getting what they need. Eva needs a pair of earrings, Alberto wants to redesign a family ring and Elsa is looking for a bogger online presence for her business. Using Joyful helped them overcome their problems. Imagining the scenarios helped us empathize with the users, and we could better address the frustrations they would face.

VALUE PROPOSITION

“Joyful helps young consumers who want to buy, design, or repair a jewel in a controlled and reliable environment, through a safe, transparent, and sustainable purchase. Joyful enhances local businesses and their expertise as artisans of metals and gems, a quality that big chains have lost along the way."

Main functionalities:
marketplace, advanced filters, sustainability rating.

*In this phase, we developed methodologies such as "value proposition canvas" and "lean canvas" to better define our proposal, concept, and business model.

—Develop

It was time to set our site out. So we started by developing its architecture of information. For this, after analyzing competitors' structures, we conducted card sorting dynamics with a few participants. This helped us to be more confident about the complex structure our marketplace would need. 

At this point, and given the scope of this academic project, we decided to focus only on the b2c half of our site. The limitations of time and resources wouldn't let us develop a quality b2b part. If this project were real, both parts would be essential for the MVP.

Having a sitemap, we developed the user flows our two "consumer heroes" would follow to do their tasks. With that outcome as a roadmap, we moved to Figma to create some black and white wireframes that contained the main structure and information of each step of the flow. 

This let us connect a bunch of mid-fi simple prototypes that we could test again with our always helpful participants. 

—Deliver

Time for branding and visuals. We started to build the graphic image of Joyful by setting a color and typographic palette. Electric blue was the accent that would be present in the whole site. 
We also chose Apercu, a very clean font for all the texts and important pieces of information. Apercu has also a monospace variant that would be perfect for all the technical data. Roashe, a very ornamental font would give the final stylish point to the interface.

Given that our marketplace would be full of varied imagery from different jewelers, we found it necessary to follow a minimalistic style in all our visuals. That would avoid confusion and would give a tidier look.

To make the design process more efficient, we developed a very first version of Joyful design system in Figma, with typographic scale, buttons, icons, forms, grids, and other useful components and variants, that helped use design screens better and faster.

SCREENS

Desktop home

Category page

Product page

Mobile screens

Filtering

—Learnings & Next steps

This project gave me an understanding that how difficult it is to introduce a digital shift into an established sector such as jewelry. Also the need of considering the touch in consumers but also in jewelers and artisans.

• We realized that economic crisis and generational shift are the main problems of the deterioration of this sector. A digital transformation is an urgent matter.
• Sustainability is already a must in any product proposal. It needs to be considered whatever the product.

We are aware that from now on, Joyful would need some to take significant next steps such as developing the b2b interface, carrying out a significative user testing, and setting out a Joyful app.

— OTHER PROJECTS

© 2022. Míriam R. Seoane

hola@miriamrseoane.com