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Cookie Crystal
Online store for crystal
shopping.
Role : Ux UI designer, Ux research
Duration : 4 weeks
Team : Individual
Tool : Figma
Methodology : Design thinking driven product concept development.
The world is now learning about what the forefathers in India and the Eastern countries knew all along—the healing power of crystals. The Guardian recently reported a 40 per cent increase in Google search for crystal healing. So while we, here in India (at least a majority of us) have been carrying our crystals with us for luck, good health, safety, abundance and more, for years, many are still waking up to this new form of healing. From adding them to the bookshelves, to carrying them in their bags, wearing them as accessories or in beauty products and water, crystals are gaining popularity fast, all over the world.
In three short years, crystals have risen from niche new age interest to valid hobby, firmly embedded in the mainstream consciousness. In 2017 crystals became a multibillion-dollar slice of the $4.2trn global wellness industry, with shamans using them to advise entrepreneurs on investment opportunities, and Gwyneth Paltrow selling them to encourage serenity and to “purify” water.
Project
is an healing crystal retailer application that specializes in high quality healing crystals and handcrafted crytstal jewellery, home decors etc. Crystal cookie provides customers with beautiful and authentic healing crystals in various form, jewellery to wear on around in this modern world and home decor etc while providing their local crystal artisans with financial support for their artistic craft. Crystal lovers, self healers, crystal theparist and gemstone geek are Crystal's cookie main customers. Being interested in self healing, I found no application in the indian market directed towards selling healing crystals so this became my driving thought behind this project.
Crytal cookie
The idea was to bring digital power in healing community by easing out crystals online shopping experience for them along with incraesing awareness about it to the world who has long forgot about this useful method.
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The User?
Through background research it was seen that crystals specially for healing purpose are been used by a aboard range of age group. From using it as a stress management during exams by a school kid to old age people using it for health, spiritually etc. So the age group take is from 16-80 years old.
These people are turning towards spiritual ways for living their life. They are discovering the other side and realising the power it contains.
User Goal
There main goal is to manage and eradicate their problems of anxiety, depression, fear etc which they face in daily life which hinders their growth or to add value to their life like abundance, good health, clarity etc through the process of crystal healing. Easy buying and using of crytals to help them with their respective desires/problems seems to be the main goal for this user group.
The Solution
Since covid called for maximum use to digital power a digital solution will bring all crystal healing related services and products to one platform. An app that allows quick and easy buying of authentic crytals, provides information for using them, along with a dedicated section for spreading awareness about crystal healing.
The application offers the following features based on the problems faced by users:
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User friendly shopping experience.
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Creating trust btw the user and the brand.
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Clear information about the product.
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Assistance to help users with the journey and afterwards.
The Problem
With everything becoming digital in todays world, very less importance is given towards the spiritual healing sector. Crystal Healers and self helpers finds it very difficult to find a good source of buying authentic and quality healing crystals. Mostly gets them from metaphysical stores. Not only is it difficult to find trustworthy stores, but also managing the time in this busy world makes its a task for the them.
While shopping for healing crystals these are following problems faced by users:
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Not finding crystals matching to their problem or desire.
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Getting bad quality crytals.
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Getting scammed by online sellers.
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Overwelmed by the amount of information presented online.
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Modern lifetsyle makes it difficult to go and buy from offline stores.
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Not getting enough information about it.
Process
Research
Define
Problem/Solution
Market Research
User Analysis
Personas
Empathy Map
Design
Task Flow
Information Architecture
Prototype
Wireframes
UI Designs
This project is my personal project. As the ux designer for this project, I started by identifying the need for this application, conducting research, followed by understanding the diverse users. This helped me developing personas, visualizing the customer's shopping journey, designing mid fidelity wireframes and UI design of the application.
Project
Surveys, Interviews, Contextual enquiry
I began with my research by looking for crystal healing facebook groups, new age subreddits, and self healers groups that I could survey. Through my research I hypothesized the user of my app would fall into two categoiries first being the regular users and the other being the new users. Based on the knowlege they had I divided the interviewee into these two groups and asked questions accordingly to develop a solution for keeping both groups in mind. ​​​​​​​In total, I interviewed 7 people, 4 of them regular users and 3 one-time user.
Regular User This group of users were familiar with the concept of crystal healing. They frequently used them in their daily life and wanted to
New User This group of users were not or partially familiar with the concept of crystal healing. They were very facinated by the concept of crystal healing and wanted to benefit from it.
Question asked
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How often do you use crystals in your life?
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How did you first hear about crystals?
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For what purpose you do you use them?
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Do you like to wear or carry them? If yes, in what form?
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What are your thoughts on ethical sourced jewelry?
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In which form do you prefer to have crystal?
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Do you think it would be helpful if they had online store?
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What difficulties you face while buying/searching a crystal online?
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Would it be helpful if there are educational sources on the app? (like blogs,experiences, guide)
Question asked
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Are you aware about crystal healing? If not, would you be interested in knowing?
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How did you first hear about crystals?
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Are you willing to spend money on crystals?
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For what purpose you would like to use them?
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What are your thoughts on ethical sourced jewelry?
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In which form do you prefer to have your crystal?
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Do you think it would be helpful if you could buy it from online store?
Insights from the interview :
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People want easy searching and buying of crystals for their particular desire or problem.
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They want authentic and good quality crystals as through the interview it was known that seller selling crystals on amazon and other website send broken or bad quality crystals.
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People had very less time to meditate with crystals in these modern times, they wanted a situtable form to match with their lifestyle.
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The healing stones were used for two purpose, first being for massage purpose like hot stones, deep tissue etc. They used it for pain relief, relaxation, muscle tension release etc. Second purpose being of healing and alternative treatment like meditation, reiki, crystal healing. They wanted to balance their energy and calm down their mind.
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For the new users the main problem was not getting enough information about it. They were very much interested but having little knowledge created a lot of confusion by seeing the amount of information presented to them which lead them to dropping the plan to persue it.
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Choosing which crystals to buy is linked to their daily duties and routines however, some crystals are linked to solving personal problems or are needed for constand support are used permanently.
To cap off our research, I visited a local crystal store in Delhi where the kind store owner described her customers to me and explained how people used crystals. I was even lucky enough to witness an overwhelmed first-time crystal buyer purchase her list of crystals and exit the store with an excited aura.
Personas and User stories
I took all my answers and insights from the interview and started with building up user personas and scenarios. I devised 3 customer personas to better represent the target audience.
Story Telling
Once upon a time, there was a woman named Mia. She was an architect, a design head in a big company.
Everyday, she worked more than 12 hours, and went home, did her duties and handled her independent life. The work stress started adding anxiety in her life.
One day, she was trying to finish a job, but everything was going wrong. She just couldn't ignore the anxiety anymore and she knew she had to do something about it. Having faith in holistic approach to healing she decided to call her healer.
She was suggested few minutes of yoga and meditation daily but being very busy with her work schedule her healer suggested her to wear amethyst or any other anxiety healing crystal on her body which acts as 'the Anxiety Alleviator'.
Until finally, being busy with work having no time to go and pick it up from the store she decides to go online and look for it. She finds cookie crystal and then is able to easily buy and read about the crystals and how to manage her anxity with it.
Phase
After walking in our customers’ shoes (and maybe touching their favorite gemstones), I landed on a potential solution for my project problem. In order to successfully bring the crystal shopping experience online, I need to :​
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Showcase Crystal cookie's high quality product.
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Showcase expertise, knowlege and guidance to the users.
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Design easy navgation to find their desired product.
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Tell it's story and social impact to gain trust.
I listened to my research responses and many said that “being drawn to” or “vibing” with the crystals is essentially impossible online, keeping this thing in mind I found that If a customer shops online for their crystal it's because of the following cases:
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They know what crystal they’re looking for.
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They have a specific problem, for which they're looking for a crystal as a solution. ( ex: Soul is feeling very negative n anxious so she wants to buy a crystal/jewellry to improve the energies)
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They want to shop their intention. ( ex: Soul wants to feel love in her life so she wants to buy a crystal for this particular intension.)
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They want to gift it to someone.
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With these insights in mind, I began to brainstorm possible features for my app.
Task Flow
Wireframe and User Flow
Project
Design
The home screen is without a doubt the most important view inside the app. The main focus was given on clear navigation and easy user flow. Since this app had a lot of variety of product, I gave easy top navigation for users to quicky view the categories.
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Homepage
Top Categories
Horizontal scrolling
Because of a lot of variety availabe for crystals it became important to make clear and easy buying of the product. By introducing horizontal scrolling at top to show different categoeies, users will find it easier to seach for their product.
Nav Bar Design
Offers and Highlights
Vertical scroll of the feed is showing with offers, promotions and highlights for the user.
The user can scroll through popular categories to shop from. It was discovered through the user interview that people approach to buy a crystal through different perspective. Hence the products were sorted and categoried keeping in mind easy navigation for the users.
Options Screen
This form triggers the user to think and take action for buying any crystal leading them straight to the wanted product pages without getting confused. This specially helps the new users looking for buying a crystal.
I came up with a solution for quick pop up feature ie. FIND MY CRYSTAL. This is a form that acts as a search engine. It’s aimed at users who know what they’re looking for (e.g. a jewellery that gives adundance energy). This form will narrow down their search faster than a search bar.
Find My Crystal
Feature
On clicking on any of the tabs it drops down to show further sub categories. This gives the user the idea about the items available under different categories. They can easily locate the item they want to buy.
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Categories
and Sort
Quick Filters and Sorting
These were designed identifying what filters were commonly used by the users giving them easily visibilty to their required filter. Quick filters for easy searching of the product which will help the user find the right thing much faster.
Screen
To avoid the page from getting overloaded with information and making the user distracted from the goal. The screen was designed as simple n direct as possible. Also, the users aren’t ready to jump from one page to another to get different information about the item they are interested in. Therefore, top categories were introduced ie. About, Details and Reviews for the users to view the desired information without going back and forth.
Easy switching option along major product info without going to a new page.
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Cart
My goal was to simplify all the various inputs based on our users’ behavior, including:
1. Delete items
2. Edit quantity
3. View item detail
My Crystal Guide
This section contains video from experts on how to use the crystals for beginners as well as the regular users.
Experiences from famous healers
User can view knowledge shared by healers to help them in understanding their bought crystals and how to use, cleanse and recharge them with few tricks and tips.
Celestrial calender and reminder
As the celestrial events play a major role in the lives of users. A calender feature was added to the design to increase the engagement. User can see the upcoming month's events like the full moon and various conjunctions etc to plan their crystal recharging etc. A reminder feature is given to the user to set a reminder for the day in case they happen to forget.
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Explore
Explore section was designed for making the app more engaging. This contain all the necessary information related to crystal healing. It gives one stop solution to the user. Many users specially the new user group got over whelmed with the about of information persent on the internet.
Product Detail
1 click
Edit Quantity
1 click
Delete
Slide n 1 click
Frequently ask questions
Most frequently asked question for the users looking for answers to they question. Top four question are prioritized n are displayed infront for the users to easily find them.
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