Spree

Creating One Centralized Hub for Online Shoppers
ROLE
Lead Product Designer,
Co-founder
TOOLS
Figma,
Illustrator,
After Effects
TEAM
Shub Gaur (PM),
Tyler Fong (Dev),
Matt Evenson (Dev)
DURATION
Jan 2020- Present
‍Spree is a Chrome extension that helps users 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 Lead Product 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.
Interface Development
Whiteboarding
Sketches
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.
Main Features
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1. Shop on Any Online Store
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‍Without having multiple tabs open, users can shop on any online store by simply adding items to Spree's consolidated shopping cart.

Using filters, users can compare items based on price, brands, and categories.
2. Have Access to a Detailed Budget Analysis of Your Shopping Expenses

Rather than focusing on all expenses, we specifically focus on your shopping spendings.

We analyze your spending habits by recording them in detailed shopping categories, such as Beauty, Home & Furniture, Clothing, and more.
3. Save Money through Our Reward System
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‍Once you purchase items through Spree, you receive Spree points that can be used in future purchases.
Moving Forward
After presenting to a panel of judges, we received feedback that we could further develop our product by adding a comparison feature where users can compare items side by side. Another suggestion was to show various deals related to the item, so users could have access to the best possible deals. Overall, the valuable insight from the judges and identification of pain points have helped us think about further ways to improve Spree.

Through this project, I realized that it's important to not only consider the design but also the technical aspects when developing a product. Because most online stores require customers to sign up before checking out, our business would face technical difficulties in creating a consolidated shopping cart that allows users to checkout in one-click. We would have to partner with big online stores, so we could allow Spree users to create an account that would work across all online stores.

Key Takeaways
  • Challenges are difficult, but rewarding
  • Consider not only design, but also technical aspects when developing a product
  • Refer back to user's needs to further improve product
Home

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If anything was interesting to you or just wanna chat, feel free to reach out to me or shoot me an email!

Contact me here
nohs@usc.edu
Want to learn more about my experiences? Check out my resume below!Resume