Macy's Case Study
Published: 2022-10-11 16:27:14

<u>WHO</u>: 
Christa Sangster Monroe, UX Designer
     Nathan Garrett, UX Designer
     Jonathan Gentsch, UX Designer

<u>WHAT</u>: 
Reviewed and researched the use of Macy's website menu; offered revised and edited website menu.

<u>WHY</u>: 
Women with families come to Macy's website for convenience when shopping for clothes for themselves and their entire family unit.  Yet,  they are bogged down on Macy’s site with an overwhelming amount of secondary and tertiary tabs that make finding items to buy difficult.

<u>SCOPE</u>:
This project was conducted within 5 days with no budget.  The time was utilized focusing on <b>empathizing</b> with users and understanding their needs, <b>defining</b> the current issues with the website's menu, <b>creating</b> solutions for the issues presented, creating a <b>prototype</b> menu from the user research and data collected, and <b>testing</b> the new website menu for further feedback.

<u>HOW</u>: 
                          
<h2><b>EMPATHIZE</b></h2>

![Sitemap of Macy's website](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/4yby4hvp4dwv0juwmguo.png)

We began our project with a detailed sitemap of Macy's website. It was through the inspection of the sitemap that we recognized the weight of the site leaned heavily on the Women's and clothes tabs. We decided to focus our efforts on the clothing tabs as a result of being realistic about the time and effort that we could give to the task.  This task also informed us of the details we needed to create our protopersona.  


![Created protopersona information for Brenda](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/59l2a8ug5yaifbv90qad.png)

We created a protopersona that would have the means and reason to shop on Macy's website as opposed to going instore and that would have reason to shop multiple locations of Macy's website.  This is how we developed Brenda, a full-time working mother and wife that will always need to save time.  

While developing Brenda, we began filtering through each section for apparel on Macy's site.  Our goal was to understand where there was unnecessary duplication occurring in order to create a card sort and questions for a tree test to better understand if, as we were expecting, users were experiencing some form of decision fatigue or having difficulty navigating the multitude of options that Macy's website presents.

<h2><b>DEFINE</b></h2>


![Card Sort information from user tests](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/inq0rat45kv0zsr6ys83.png)

While Brenda was our ideal user, we understood the necessity to cast a wide net in our research.  While Brenda covered much of what we would assume a user of Macy's website would be, we understood that Macy's is for all persons that would have a desire to shop there.  We decided to allow for a wide net in inviting individuals to take our card sort and tree test.

In choosing the target area for our card sort, we settled  on the Shoe section as there was a mass amount of varying types of shoes and yet, at the same time, there was no option in any section that allowed for a user to locate Brand shoes aside from in the Women's  section.  We decided to use the card sort to assist in how to better organize the Shoe section according to the users perspective.


![Tree Test information from user tests](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/e6l2cydcbwna915h33dv.png)

In the tree test, we focused our questions on problem areas that we discovered in each section; the lack of a Brand Name Shoe option aside from in the Women's section, a question for the kid's section (although the kid's section was fairly clear and direct in it's layout.), a sport's apparel inquiry that was only found in the men's tab, and an inquiry on a women's undergarment clothing item that was not nested under undergarments.

The users performed as to be expected.  It was determined from the results that the site was too bulky and confusing as normative items were held under parent sections that did not match the common understanding of the items.  Aside from the kids section, users chose the wrong answer directly 50 to 100% of the time.

This helped us to understand that our original direction was still the best route.  We continued forward in better organizing the website and deleting duplicate or confusing sections of the site.

<h2><b>IDEATE</b></h2>


![First half of annotations on Macy's website menu](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/i4lz3wpas5qyssefrp8m.png)

![Second half of annotations on Macy's website menu](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/r6wy2tb9j66eaw4dcx27.png)

We used our site annotations to provide a small picture of the adjustments that were being made:
* The surplus of options presented by the site promote decision fatigue and increase the possibility of issues and errors according to Hick's Law.
* Tree test showed that users had errors when choosing topics that were too specific or confusing.
* Microcopy found in the search bar (Search bar space holder "Please fill out this field") that needs to be removed.
* Tree test suggested users were confused by the current placement of sportswear and activewear under the Men's section, we decided to move them to the Men's clothing section.
* Users were unable to further refine footwear categories so the variety of shoe categories were kept as the card sort showed that the variety was snecessary.
* Tree test showed that having shoe brands only located under the label of "Women's Shoe Brands" left users at a complete loss as to where to locate "Shoe Brands" for other categories.  We resolved to create a "Shoe Brands" category, under the Shoes Primary tab, in place of the "Women's Shoe Brands."

<h2><b>PROTOTYPE</b></h2>

![Revised portions of Macy's sitemap](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tp7hzeggea2c96csojwt.png)

Along with the annotated points, we also removed tabs that duplicated primary tabs or other secondary tabs, consolidated secondary tabs that could be nested under similar secondary tabs(plus size, petite being consolidated into a sizes tab), and suggesting that Macy's guide users to rely more heavily on the filters in the search results.

<h2><b>TEST</b></h2>

In the interest of the amount of time left, we took a more relaxed approach to allowing users review our adjustments.  The feedback given was that the changes were needed and the site would be easier to maneuver with the reduction of tabs and options.