MidwayUSA Holster Finder
Summary
My first major project at MidwayUSA was to create the company’s first finder tool. A holster has a lot of variabilities when it comes to fitment, which was causing a large number of customer returns. I was part of the team tasked to create a tool to help customers find a holster that fits their firearm and therefore decrease the number of returns.
At the start of the project, we did initial benchmarking of other finder-type tools and had discovery sessions with subject matter experts. We determined the attributes necessary to determine the proper fitment of a holster were the firearm’s manufacturer, model, and barrel length.
After determining a UI, we tested a prototype with five users. We discovered some users looking down at their keyboards while typing and were misspelling manufacturer names during testing. Our original UI had each input as a search which would display results after two characters had been input. If there were no results, a corresponding message would display. Users who mistyped believed we did not have holsters for that firearm manufacture and terminated their task. We altered the UI to display a dropdown when the input was in focus with this discovery. This allowed Users to use the input like a dropdown, use the input search functionality, and provide immediate feedback.
