Essay: GUI Design For Online Gift Shop - The Gift Fairy.

This study represents the Graphical User Interface for the selected online gift shop company namely The Gift Fairy. The recent trends of shopping online for ever essential aspect of human commodities like clothing. Home appliances, electronic products, fashion and life style, gift shopping, etc is increasing day by day. People in this modern era are leading a technological live and the online shopping makes them happy in these days of busy schedule. Johnson (2013) opined that in days world, everything is going digital even the medical treatment as well. As a result, developers as well as investors of the business firms are trying to make their presence online so that they can increase their sale as well as increase the customer. Apart from that, online business also allows the firm in selling their products not only a country barrier, but also internationally. On the other hand, customers are also getting more satisfaction in making online shopping as they are getting more facilities and choices of the products rather than offline shopping.  

In this particular study, analyst describes the probable website user interface of a selected organization for online shopping that is The Gift Fairy. The interfaces are created for The Gift Fairy with various options that can facilitate the customer with the attractive view. The designer of the user interface for The Gift Fairy keep the design up to date and easy navigation option with lucrative choices of color. However, the design is made with simple interaction along with the attractive user interface so that user can navigate the page easily. The various products are represents in the interface design with proper category. Product searching features are included in the design interface so that people can search for a particular product and save their time. Cart facility also available in the interface design along with the 24 x 7-helpline number at the top right corner of the page. At the bottom right corner, designer place a online support chat facilities for the customer so that they can resolve their issues instantly without facing any technical trouble. For this study, analyst designed total 10 interface page for the online presence of The Gift Fairy including home page, contact us page, product page, login/sign up page, occasion’s page, personality page, gift card, gift wiz, special deals, product category page, etc. The designed home page introduces the front-end design of The Gift Fairy along with their products for both new and more selling products. The interface design also prepared with responsive design and attractive color and features as well.

2. Project Scope

Huang and Benyoucef (2013) opined that in order to design a user interface for any ecommerce project for any online gift shop company, the designer must need to focus of designing responsive website as people in these days viewing the website from both devices mobile and desktop. Apart from that, making the design responsive allows the firm in attracting more customers because responsive design helps in easy browsing and navigation to the user. However, simple and easy navigation of the interface design can attract more user to view the products that can create more traffic and SEO in the search engine. Furthermore, Page (2014) explained that the web interface of the online shopping site must to be created simple so that it can load frequently in slow internet speed as well. However, making the project for online shopping website also create scope for enhance the business world wide and allows people in viewing their products based on their needs and demands. According to the market survey, approximately 48% people are showing their interest in shopping online for their required necessities sue to their busy schedule. Therefore, designing online shopping by The Gift Fairy can bring opportunities to sale their products to customer easily without making proper marketing campaign (Patterson & Hennessy, 2013). In addition, this project can also allow The Gift Fairy to fulfill the customer requirements of viewing product products and select based on their needs. This project can also make benefit for the company to increase customer base and share the information like offers, discounts, combo offer, etc to the customer in one click. This project allows the user in saving their choice by click on the wish list as well as they can add the choice product into the cart for future purchase. Log in or sign up facility of the project can be benefitted for both the firm and customer because firm can track the buying behavior of the customer and the customer can get online details history from their personal account along with the bill amount of purchased gifts (Rogowski, Wu, & Clark, 2014). The designed user interface also has chat facility where user can resolve their issues online by making chat with the support team instantly. Moreover, the master page of the interface designed contains details of products along with the contact details, locations, currency, cart, etc options that user can use according to their needs. Therefore, based on the designed of the user interface, following project scope can be undertaken –

1. Designing the assimilated web user interface for the selected online gift shop namely The Gift Fairy with the consisting of consolidation, images, offers, product details etc along with the top review products for the user of the interface.
2. Progressive image has been portrayed that serves for the family along with the grounded crunch which can be designed along with the user requirement regarding online shopping.
3. To increase the visibility for the end user, The Gift Fairy made continuous SEO along with the services and marketing options.
4. To help the customer in live tracking of the purchased products along with the changes of currency based on country.
5. To provide best user interaction along with various features for the crunch part of the end user’s daily functional activities.
6. To allow user in viewing products and compare it with other in terms of quality for The Gift Fairy along with the required currency based on country.
7. To ensure the required training and technical support within the place for online maintenance for the site as well as helps the daily user/visitors of the web interface The Gift Fairy
8. To assure the facility to the user sharing the emails as well as the message to their registered contact number and email id for the information about purchased product.
9. Project Requirements

Functional Requirements

For every online interface design project, there are several functional and non functional requirements that need to be met by the project manager in terms of executing the defined project properly. Aykin (2016) described that functional requirements for any online interface design project is explaining the core features of the project that created in the application. It is to be noted that for any online gift shop designing project, several functional requirements such as operational process, data gathering, functional process, etc. Vansteenkiste  et al. (2014) explained that data requirement functions developed by the designer with logical model for the designed web application in terms of consisting the entry details, entity relationship diagram, definitions, use cases, description of use cases, etc.  Furthermore, it can be analyzed that functional requirements closely relates with the designed interface and its database specially with the entities and attributes that required from the user (Ferdoush & Li, 2014). It can help in fulfilling the needs and requirements of the user for a online gift shop e-commerce site. However, for this particular user interface design project, following are the functional requirements of The Gift Fairy

 Following are the Non-functional requirements for this interface design project

 4. Key Assumptions

Friedman et al. (2013) opined that every firm mainly consists two key assumptions during to represent their business online where the first key assumption is to meet the user requirements or customer demands and the second key assumption is to make the business productive and profitable along with the attaining of business goals. For the selected online gift shop, following key assumption can be made –

Beneficial for the company – The designed interface can be useful for the company and make more user to view their products as well as buy according to their needs. This interface has been designed by keeping in mind of increasing selling of products and makes more business in the industry of online gift shop.

Making deal with the Association of The Gift Fairy: This interface has been designed for the customer to make a great deal with the association of The Gift Fairy for purchasing the gift products for their various occasions. The gift card also provide to the user so that then can so their interest in purchasing products again and again.

Effective Online Store – The user interface has been also designed for with the proficient that can contend with the other online store for gift in the SEO. The interface of The Gift Fairy is more effective and prominent in viewing products rather than the other online gift shop interface.

Regular Upto date – The technical team will update the system on regular basis. It will help in maintaining the network traffic for The Gift Fairy and helps in improving SEO. Apart from that the system must be kept refresh for the user about the present and upcoming products and its offer. The users are also get to know about the criteria of getting coupons from the website. The technical team also helps in resolving issues for the user via live chat.

Details of Functional Requirements

5. Design Process

The configuration principle for this design plan of interface usability is to enhance the efficiency and improving the speed of stacking the website page. The project also aims to design the interface that ought to be the maximum capacity of viewing products along with the category wise, which helps the user in sort for their choices of products into the interface during surfing. The designed principle objected to outline the incredible format of the website, simple routing, easy to use, productivity increment, enhance the current stock item for the user.

1. The interface design process planned to enhance the fundamental user interface structure for The Gift Fairy that contains the critical interface configuration for better view or presentation of products. The design also keep all the outline with proper consistency that pays the little heed along with the various stages and gadgets, great visual contribution, characterized as well as center components, etc.
2. The design process also seems to be manager perspective where the administration can control the quality of the confirmation, intelligent plan, accessibility, convenience testing and the substance technique.
3. The design process also allows the guest to enter into the interface and view the products along with the expedient, simple route, checkout and installment as well as track the purchased products.   
4. In terms of evaluating the need of user for the interaction, design projects (Lee, Tewolde & Kwon, 2014). The interaction design reduces the confusions between the users and designers. The interaction version that used here is role playing users and paper based prototypes.
5. For the better capture feel, mood board is used in this interaction design project along with the consideration of alternatives such as prototyping helps (Almakky, Sahandi & Taylor, 2015). The interaction design also express some imagined or proposed situations such as product details, added the products to cart before purchase like other line purchasing interaction design. There are zoom in and out functions for some extreme cases to explore to the user.

The evaluation of the designed interface is aimed at determining the user requirements being fulfilled by the interface in terms design, usability and suitability. The evaluation is focuses on understanding the extent to which the design of interface will be accepted by the users.

The methodology to evaluate the designed interface that has been undertaken are presented as below:

Layout of screen: The aim of this method is to test the placement of various components within the design and sequential ordering of elements to provide a simple and easy to use interface.

Colouring scheme: This method helps to understand design of the interface from user’s perspective on various colour being used in the design.

Determination of psychological reactions: The reaction of users have to be captured to determine acceptance of the designed interface.

The test audience selected for evaluation of the designed interface comprised of ten people among them five were male and five female. The test audience consisted of three age groups of user as 18 – 25, 26 – 30 and 31 – 40 years. The determined test audience also comprised of three colleagues who have sound knowledge of usability engineering and coding so as to test the designed interface.

Survey (Questionnaire): Survey is a factual procedure to accumulate required data from an objective populace (Goh et al. 2013). A Survey incorporates some procedure projects to be finished like illuminate the reason, assets check, pick a study strategy, play out the examining, compose a poll, process and store information, break down survey result and make conclusion.

Reviews of expert: This is a survey in which an ease of use master test the site by using his/her insight and experience. For this situation, master surveys have been utilized to enhance our site downsides.

Evaluation during active use: The feedback from users are collected on a regular basis and their reactions are recorded to identify success of the interface design. The active use of the interface only helps to determine the issues and usability of the interface being designed for the Online Gift Shop.

The analysis methodology helps to determine the process that will be applied to analyze the results achieve from evaluation of the designed interface. The main analysis methodology that has been used for evaluation of the designed interface is Heuristic evaluation. This analysis methodology helps to assess the overall system in terms of visibility, consistency, flexibility, aesthetic design and error prevention.

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