Cuddly Cryptids is a personal project of mine that aims to share my passion for designing physical products as well as monsters. This website was in desperate need of an update. Many assets were slowing the website down, and users were reporting annoying loading times and poor user experiences. This was affecting the conversion rate of the website, prompting an urgent need for a comprehensive redesign.

One of the major challenges I faced as a designer and researcher was funding. As a single designer working with a small team, the lack of funds was a major issue as we could not pay for advanced user testing. So, we used technology we already have, such as mailchimp, to get insights into what our users want.

Another major challenge was time. Many of the steps were done in a mere week. This meant that decisions needed to be quick and impactful.

The main methods in gathering data were through surveys and think aloud protocols. The surveys were great for gathering direct feedback from a massive range of users. Surveys also give users an easy framework for answering questions via multiple choice and rating questions. The results of which are displayed below:

In the very beginning of the design stage of the project I conducted a think aloud with my good subject Jason Cullen. He fit the demographic, more-or-less, of the website; either goth girls or boyfriends of goth girls. Once a hi-fi prototype was developed, I had Jason do another Think aloud to gauge what has been improved. Both protocols can be viewed here:

Protocol in the beginning:

Protocol in the end: https://youtu.be/GryLvPUlxkc

After the surveys and protocols (In actuality, during the design process as well), I had enough data to start making lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes.

The lo and hi fi prototypes (built with Figma) are here:

Once the user (Jason) and I were satisfied with the changes, I started working on implementing what I could to the actual website. Immediately there was an improvement in performance, a 50% reduction in loading times. Micro-interactions were also able to be implemented, like that of the carousel (a different version of it was added to the actual website because of our limitation with Shopify coding). In the end, conversions and organic reach went up.

The current website can be seen here: