I was comissioned by Spotless Interactive to re-think and re-design the navigation and structure of the Sony PS3 store. With France being one of their key markets in Europe, we conducted our work there as France was chosen as a Pilot country.
The problem
Users of the PS3 store were facing problems navigating the store and Sony often received complaints and saw a drop in sales. They therefore decided that research needed to be conducted in order to gain more insights and a better understanding of the problems and frustrations customers and prospects were facing.
The approach
My task was to plan and conduct the focus groups in Paris and analyse and report back on the sessions. We deemed necessary however to start the project with a short usability review in order to better understand where the problems lay. During the usability review, I quickly discovered issues with labelling and navigation. I therefore decided to prepare and include a Card Sort exercise as part of the focus group research.
I started the process by agreeing with the client the key test objectives. Following that, I created a task list and a discussion guide that I went through during the focus group. I also developed unique cards with labels to use during the card sort exercise.
It was paramount in order to gather the right results to set rules during the focus group sessions so that turn taking was respected and all people contributed equally, something that at times meant that I needed to strongly intervene as a moderator.
As expected, the focus groups gave us invaluable insights. Following the sessions I proceeded to writing a report with key findings and video clippings and presented the results to Sony Playstation senior stakeholders. We took the project a step further by also running an online card sort exercise with a different group of participants in order to get some quantitative data alongside the qualitative.
Our findings profoundly informed the design of the updated Sony PS3 platform and helped in defining a better navigation and smoother and shorter user journeys.
