Loose Nuts

Loose Nuts is a website for people looking to purchase bikes!

Residents in the Atlanta, GA area can purchase bikes, gear and request maintenance on their bikes using the site.

Timeline: 4 weeks

Role: end-to-end UX/UI designer

The Problem

Loosenuts is a project tasked at looking at how can we take a local website in our area and revamp it with the knowledge and skills we’ve acquired while in DesignLab.

Target Group

Gender: Any

Age: 25-40

Lifestyle: Active

People who are looking to own a bike or who already own a bike

The Solution

I took the old LooseNuts website and decided to revamp it with the current solutions provided! I used new website design techniques and styles that reflect our current standards for accessibility and overall style.

Business Goals

  • Bring in as many users as possible into the app

  • Revamp the website to be more accessible which will in turn bring more users to the page

  • Revamp the site with more current and up-to-date inventory which will drive sales

User Goals

  • Make it easier to view and purchase bikes from the shop

  • Make it easier to view store hours and maintenance hours

  • Make it easier to view what type of maintenance at what pricepoint customers could purchase at

Competitor Analysis

Main competitors:

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths:

  • Loyal customer base

  • Bike selling via online

  • Maintenance

  • Customer Service

Weaknesses:

Opportunities:

  • updated branding

  • selling a limited # of bike brands

  • small business

  • Bike Quotes (getting an estimate there and then when wanting to book maintenance)

Threats:

  • Redesign cost and updating their website from the others on the analysis

  • Aggressive competitor in Atlanta is Specialized

Strengths:

  • selling bikes, maintenance appointments, and rentals.

  • Making their core $ from rentals

  • Bike servicing

Weaknesses:

Opportunities:

  • Variation or expansion of their website; Currently 1 page

  • They currently don’t have a way to purchase bikes directly from their site

  • Adding a feature or catalog to purchase a bike

  • Adding a feature or catalog to schedule maintenance for a bike

Threats:

  • Specialized

  • Outback Bikes

Strengths:

  • Basic services

  • Appeals to a wider audience who maybe isn’t super competitive with cycling

  • Rental bikes that appeal to more people

Weaknesses:

Opportunities:

  • Missing a key feature of the competitive cyclists with rentals

  • Missing a key feature of the competitive cyclists with maintenance

  • Redesigning their UI to be more up-to-date with the newer shops

Threats:

  • Specialized

  • Outback Bikes

  • Atlanta Pro Bikes

Id like to explore a better way to navigate bike maintenance that focuses more on empowering the user in making the decision when parts should be maintained in the correct time period and also include doing at home maintenance when possible.

How might we empower the user to correctly identify when a part on their bike can be maintenance/needs to be maintenance either from the comfort of their own home or at their local shop?

3 Main Features & Changes

Id like to explore a better way of connecting cyclists using one app by breaking barriers of different social media outlets and utilizing one app to bridge the internet-real life gap.

How might we connect different types of riders together on one platform and bridge the internet-real life gap?

I’d like a way to keep all cyclists safe in utilizing a tool that’ll help them make better-informed decisions about their own bikes.

How might we keep cyclists safe by alerting them to maintenance issues on their bike?

The Research

Interviews

6 people were interviewed, all genders were represented equally.

All interviews took place online via zoom & via surveys sent out.

I posted on instagram the survey link along with further information to people that wanted to be interviewed more intensely for this project.

Insights

  • 90% Most people wanted a full hero page with all the info

  • 100% of participants wanted the bike inventory to be more interactive; less google sheet

  • 90% of participants found The hours at the bottom were very confusing

  • 50% of participants wanted Links to bike groups around town would have been very helpful to half the participants

  • The sizing of bikes was inconsistent in the inventory

Affinity Map

User Flow

Personas

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

High-Fidelity Wireframes

Usability Testing

I reached out to 5 participants from the first batch of research & asked them to test these four flows:

  • Desktop

  • Tablet

  • Mobile

Participants finished these flows in a 15 minute google meet call

Feedback

Participant Feedback

  • ⅘ Most participants could figure out the tasks given

  • ⅕ participants could not figure out how to click which service they want

  • ⅗ participants could not figure out their bike size alone

Actionable Items

  • Adding a button to the services page itself

  • Adding a sizing button for the bike sizes

Final Result based on the feedback

Thoughts behind the design:

The main thoughts behind the design of Loose Nuts was keeping it simple, but also effective in translating the old design into the new design and how users interact with the site itself. I wanted to make sure their site was up to date into the 21st century with flexible datasets that show current bike inventory and a flexible mobile-to-desktop transition.

Key Takeaways

What I would have done differently:

This project challenged my website design skills heavily and figuring out how to navigate this project helped me a ton in future projects. I would have done some key design aspects of the homepage differently, I would of done a deeper dive into overall accessibility and figured out how to inject their own logos into the design better.

Personal Aspect:

This project taught me how to work within a brand and expand on it! I do believe that many local brands in Atlanta that our familyrun or small local shops don’t get the attention and detail from designers as they should. Local heroes like Loose Nuts bike shop in Atlanta have shown me that it’s all about putting your efforts into helping smaller brands to overall affect the marketplace overall in a competitive scene like Atlanta.

Stakeholder Management:

This project did challenge my stakeholder management with how we can balance inventory management, current bike systems, and flexible maintenance systems to help bike shops streamline their maintenance software without having to give up having an online booking system in place.