01
From Breakdown to Breakthrough
The Problem
The Hoot.ae platform was in crisis — what my manager described as a “free fall.” User retention was dropping rapidly, and the entire experience was breaking down.
The challenges were widespread, spanning marketing, packaging, delivery, website performance, and significant UI/UX issues.
The Goal
My primary objective was to identify the core UI/UX issues and rapidly design a new concept for the platform, despite tight timelines and limited resources.
02
Research
I planned to start the design thinking process by understanding users, but since the cooperative had already defined them and I lacked context on why users were dropping off, I focused on improving the digital experience, excluding technical issues.
UI inconsistency was evident, but not enough to explain the decline. Given it’s an e-commerce platform, I began primary research with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey, customized using Harvard Business School insights. To keep it natural, I framed it as a general user habits survey.
However, the results didn’t reflect real issues. Further research showed that NPS may miss specific pain points, so I switched to Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, which revealed the true reasons for user drop-offs and helped me move forward with the design process effectively.
A key resource was Assortment and Merchandising Strategy by Constant Berkhout, which guided my thinking on product placement, shopper behavior, and creating seamless user journeys across different scenarios.
1. Home Page | 2. Searching | 3. View Product |
Users had no technical issues navigating the homepage, their main feedback focused on how the products were merchandised. | Users found the search bar frustrating and unintuitive, there were no suggestions, no search icon, and results showed raw backend indexing terms. Pressing Enter was the only way to search. | Some products lacked images, leaving users to click on empty spaces with no context. There was no additional product info, no related items, and no suggestions—creating a dead-end in the user journey. |
4. Compare products | 5. Add to Cart | 6. Checkout |
Comparing products was frustrating for users due to the lack of clear information and standardized attributes. | The 'Add to Cart' interaction felt awkward, feedback was unclear, and the animation lacked clarity. Stock limits were also confusing, with no clear criteria shown to users. | The checkout experience was frustrating, poor layout, no back button, and unclear steps left users confused and uneasy, especially about the security of the payment process. |
03
Ideation
Since this is an e-commerce platform, I followed the famous Jakob's Law: users spend most of their time on other websites, so our users need to feel the same familiarity they know from other e-commerce platforms. In other words, we weren't going to reinvent the wheel. I spent most of my time on the ideation stage, and since we were going for a full prototype, I used both How Might We and Crazy Eights exercises to stimulate ideas.
In the following image for example, I used the following criteria from Berkhout's book to create our merchandising, the book also mentioned the rule of 7, or as we UXers know it, Miller's law, the rest of the ideation is shown as a result on the final design for the first iteration.
04
Iteration
Given the tight timeline, I moved straight into the first iteration after completing my research. We chose to build and test a full hi-fi prototype instead of starting with a lo-fi one.
I applied insights from my research alongside key design principles like Jakob’s Law and Hick’s Law to guide the design decisions.
The redesigned experience and restructured workflow lifted team productivity by 65%, resolved 20+ critical UX gaps identified in research, and cut documentation time for stakeholder reviews by 85%.
