Spree

Creating One Centralized Hub for Online Shoppers

ROLE

Head Designer,
Co-founder

TOOLS

Figma,
Principle,
Illustrator,
After Effects,
Blender

TEAM

Shub Gaur (PM),
Tyler Fong (Dev),
Matt Evenson (Dev)

DURATION

Jan 2020- Present
(launching soon!)

‍Spree is a Chrome extension that enables users to put all their items in one cart and find the best deals, decluttering and optimizing the shopping experience.

BACKGROUNDLast year, as a participant of the Google x Techstars Startup Weekend Event, I pitched my idea Spree and was selected as one of the 6 business ideas to be developed. After three days of ideation and development, we presented to a panel of judges and our team was awarded 2nd place.
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Because I wanted to further develop this idea and build a functional product with a team, I joined LavaLab, a student incubator on-campus, in Spring 2020. As the team’s Head Designer, I was in charge of conducting user research, developing features, designing the logo and pitch deck, creating high-fidelity mockups, and prototyping in a span of 10 weeks. We are still in the process of building Spree and we’re aiming towards launching our product in Fall 2020.

Motivation

While shopping online, I often times switch back and forth from one tab to another to compare items and find the product that I want to purchase. Because I shop on multiple websites, I have too many tabs, too many accounts, and too many carts I have to keep track of.
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After talking to my friends, I realized that we’ve all faced similar struggles while shopping online. We fill out our information multiple times to create new accounts, move from one tab to another to compare products, and spend hours searching for the best deal.
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To fix these problems, I started to wonder if there would be a way to optimize shopping experience.

How can we help online shoppers have a more organized, time-efficient, and stress-free shopping experience?

Understanding the Problem

Since the e-commerce space is a two-sided marketplace, where consumers and sellers interact, both groups face problems that influence one another. Because online consumers struggle with comparing deals and navigating websites, sellers are facing a huge loss of 4.6 trillion dollars due to increased cart abandonment rates (business problem).

Research

To have a better perspective on the problems that consumers face while shopping online, I created a Google survey and sent it out to students at the University of Southern California. The main goal of this survey was to understand why consumers would eventually abandon or lose track of their shopping carts.
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Some of the questions included:

On average, how many tabs do you have open while shopping online?
Do you often lose track of items you put in your shopping cart and abandon your cart? If so, why?
What restrains you from checking out your shopping cart?

User Personas

To further understand specific pain points that online shoppers face, I created three user personas for the most important behaviors I’ve observed from the survey results.

The current shopping experience has many repetitive steps; users have to create new accounts, fill out their personal information multiple times, and constantly move back and forth in between numerous online stores to compare items.

User Journey

Removing these repetitive steps, Spree allows users to create one universal account that will work across multiple online stores. With Spree, users would be able to compare items and find deals in one cart and checkout in one click.

Main Features
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1. Find the Best Deals
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‍User Problem: Online shoppers face the need to find the best deals among multiple websites, cluttering the browsing experience.

How it's solved: Spree instantly finds the best deals related to the same item and allows users to instantly replace the current item with a better deal.

2. One-Click Checkout

User Problem: Many online shoppers abandon their carts due to the long checkout process.

How it's solved: Spree allows users to checkout from multiple websites in just one-click.

In redesigning Spree, I focused on simplifying the user experience by focusing on the cart and price comparison feature. Also, I changed the layout to improve overall readability and accessibility.

Interface Development

Logo Development

Based on my teammates' feedback, I decided to redesign the logo because the initial version looked similar to one of our competitors' logo. I simplified the typeface and added a cart logo to develop a more unique style.

Ultimate Goal

Our ultimate goal is to help online consumers compare products, find the best deals, and checkout all in one place, making online shopping an easy and seamless experience.

Moving Forward

Through this project, I realized that it's important to not only consider the design but also the technical aspects when developing a product. Initially, I proposed the idea that users would be able to add any item from any website, but I realized that it wasn't feasible since every online store has a different checkout flow. Instead, we focused on making Spree fully compatible with three major online stores: Amazon, Target, and Walmart—and we're still in the process of increasing our compatibility with more stores.

Working with my team members from different fields was a really eye-opening experience for me because I was able to view my designs in a more objective way than before. Since it's so easy to get attached to your own designs as a designer, I realized that it's important to be open to taking feedback from everyone to create a better product. Also, working with my teammates helped me push my boundaries as a designer; I designed Spree's mascot and modeled it from scratch in Blender (check out my 3D Design stuff!)

Key Takeaways

Consider not only design, but also technical aspects when developing a product
Be open to feedback and work with people from diverse backgrounds!