UX DESIGNER
The Problem
The absence of a dedicated Dollar Tree app created a gap in the digital experience for its customers, limiting the brand's ability to engage users on mobile platforms. For Family Dollar, the existing app presented significant opportunities for improvement, particularly in terms of user experience. The app's interface and functionality were not aligned with user expectations, leading to friction in navigation, feature accessibility, and overall engagement. Our goal was to enhance the UX by redesigning the app to be more intuitive, user-friendly, and aligned with modern design standards.
Our Solution
For both Dollar Tree app and Family Dollar, we aimed to deliver a unified and user-centered digital experience. For Dollar Tree, we designed a comprehensive mobile app solution from scratch, focusing on ease of use, customer engagement, and digital-first features such as personalized product recommendations and streamlined shopping flows.
For Family Dollar, we undertook a full UX redesign of the existing app, addressing key pain points identified through user research. Our approach centered on optimizing the app’s functionality, improving the overall user interface, and enhancing the shopping experience with modern, intuitive design principles. These solutions were tailored to increase customer satisfaction, drive engagement, and align with evolving user expectations in the retail space.
Explore the Design Process
In this section, you have the option to explore two different paths.
You can choose to review the overall design process we followed for developing both the Dollar Tree and Family Dollar apps,
or
dive deeper into a specific case study, where I highlight the detailed UX design journey for one of the most important features—the Cart.
Dollar Tree
Family Dollar
Objective
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Create intuitive, user-friendly experiences: Ensure both apps provide seamless navigation and easy access to products and services, reducing friction for users during their shopping journey.
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Tailor solutions to brand identities: Design a distinct experience for each app—building Dollar Tree from scratch and modernizing Family Dollar—to reflect their unique brand values while meeting user needs.
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Enhance user engagement and satisfaction: Leverage insights from competitive research to implement features that resonate with users, ensuring both apps are highly functional, visually appealing, and enjoyable to use.
Design Workflow Recap
01. Research
02. Explore and Refine
03. Final Product
01. Research Recap
The research phase played a critical role in guiding our approach to the design of both the Dollar Tree and Family Dollar apps simultaneously.
For Dollar Tree, we designed the app from scratch, using competitive analysis and user insights to shape a fresh, user-centric experience. On the other hand, the Family Dollar app was redesigned to adopt a more modern and intuitive look, ensuring it met current user expectations.
Our research process was comprehensive and multi-faceted. It included a deep dive into apps like Walmart, Amazon, Temu, and Target, where we analyzed key sections such as the home page, PDP, PLP, and PCP. We also conducted user interviews and usability testing to identify pain points and gather feedback on features that would enhance the shopping experience. Additionally, we explored market trends, user behavior analytics, and accessibility standards to ensure our designs were not only visually appealing but also highly functional for a wide range of users.
01. Competitive Research
Analyze competitors' products to understand strengths, weaknesses, and potential gaps in the market.
We wanted to thoroughly understand the user experience design patterns of leading e-commerce apps and identify opportunities to enhance our own app's usability. Here’s a breakdown of that process from a UX perspective:
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Mapping User Flows: Analyzed the step-by-step process users follow from landing on the home page to completing a purchase, identifying how each app structures its navigation and checkout journey.
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Page Structure & Hierarchy: Evaluated the layout and hierarchy of key pages (home page, PDP, PLP, checkout) to understand how content is organized and prioritized to support user tasks efficiently.
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Interaction Design: Studied the micro-interactions (e.g., add-to-cart, wishlist, filters) and their impact on user engagement, making note of ease of use and clarity of interactive elements.
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Information Architecture: Assessed the categorization of products and the overall structure of the app, focusing on how easily users can find and access desired content through search and navigation menus.
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Checkout Experience: Investigated the checkout process flow, including the number of steps, form usability, and payment options, to understand how smooth and frictionless the transaction process was for users.
02. Explore & Refine: Concept Creation
This is where we translate insights from the research into tangible designs, creating low-fidelity wireframes and interactive prototypes to visualize the user experience.
Throughout this phase, we continuously collaborate with stakeholders, discussing our progress at every step. Feedback is crucial, and we revisit or adjust sections as needed to ensure alignment with business goals and user needs.
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Visualize User Flows: Create wireframes to map out how users will navigate through the app and complete key tasks, based on research insights.
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Test Design Concepts: Develop interactive prototypes to test and validate different design approaches early on, reducing the risk of costly changes later.
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Iterate & Refine: Continuously refine the design based on stakeholder feedback, usability testing, and alignment with user needs and business objectives.
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Prepare for Usability Testing: Use prototypes to gather real user feedback in the next phase of usability testing, ensuring the design works in practice before development.
03. Final Product: App Shipping & Iteration
After the initial design and development phases, and various rounds of stakeholder feedback... the release of the Dollar Tree and Family Dollar apps was conducted in a strategic, phased approach.
Here’s how we managed the release, user feedback, and iteration:
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Phased Rollout: We implemented a regional release strategy, launching the app in specific areas first to gather real-world user insights before expanding to a broader audience.
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User Feedback Loop: We actively gathered user feedback through various channels:
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Monthly surveys: Sent to users to understand pain points, feature requests, and overall satisfaction.
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App store reviews: Monitored for insights into user experience issues, new feature requests, and overall app performance.
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UX Research and Analysis: Collected qualitative and quantitative feedback to identify patterns in user behavior, app functionality, and device-specific performance issues.
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Device-specific troubleshooting: We tracked issues across different devices, ensuring that any bugs or performance issues were resolved promptly for a seamless user experience.
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Continuous Improvement: Prioritized and implemented user-requested features that aligned with business goals and user needs. Conducted regular iterations based on user feedback, addressing key pain points and enhancing functionality to improve the overall user experience.
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Global Release: Once the app proved stable and user feedback was largely positive, we proceeded with the global rollout.
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Continued to monitor app health and performance post-launch, ensuring the app remained user-friendly, functional, and aligned with both user expectations and business objectives.
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Post-Launch Maintenance: Kept track of the app’s success metrics and iterated on the design and features through regular updates to keep the app alive, healthy, and relevant.
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Actively maintained a feedback loop to ensure that user concerns were addressed in future updates and that new features enhanced the user experience.
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Cart Workflow Recap
01. Research
02. Explore and Refine
03. Final Product
01. Cart Competitive Research
Research is crucial for designing an effective cart page because it helps us understand how users naturally navigate the checkout flow and what they expect. By conducting competitive research, we gain insights into best practices and industry standards, while analyzing user flow and mental models helps us align the cart experience with users' habits and expectations. This understanding leads to a smoother, more intuitive design that reduces friction, minimizes cart abandonment, and ultimately boosts conversions.
Here’s a carousel showcasing our competitive analysis, where we’ve researched the strengths and weaknesses of the cart pages across the following apps.
In Summary:
Walmart: The cart strengths lie in convenience-focused features, such as upfront cost visibility, automatic cheapest options, and quantity flexibility, all of which enhance the shopping experience. However, enhancing geotargeting, alternative options, and cut-off clarity could further personalize and streamline the cart experience, leading to higher user satisfaction and potentially increased conversions.
Target: The Cart's strengths in linking PDPs, providing clear thumbnails, and hiding unnecessary fields contribute to a focused and user-friendly checkout experience. Improvements in layout clarity, cross-sell relevance, and total cost transparency could further enhance the flow, promoting an efficient checkout that minimizes distractions and builds user confidence.
Staples: The cart experience gains from clear visual emphasis on headers, thoughtful placement of third-party options, concrete delivery dates, and streamlined top-of-screen checkout options. Attention to these details minimizes friction and enhances usability, while improvements to cart header visibility and better placement for payment options would further refine the flow, helping users reach the end of checkout without unnecessary distraction.
Dollar General: The app effectively displays clear cart and subtotal information, enabling users to easily view their total costs, which aids in quick purchasing decisions and budget management. Additionally, the immediate availability of deals within the cart enhances user engagement and satisfaction by encouraging exploration of savings options. However, weaknesses include unclear pickup options that can confuse users, essential pickup information being isolated from other details, and irrelevant sponsored products that disrupt the shopping experience. Furthermore, the absence of a promo code field and upfront pricing insights can lead to frustration and hinder conversions, highlighting the need for improved transparency and usability.
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Cart User Flow
The cart user flow creates a seamless journey from the Product Details Page (PDP) to Checkout. Users begin on the PDP, where they can view product details, select options, and add items to their cart, receiving a notification to continue shopping or view the cart and then place the order.. After placing the order, users receive a confirmation with their order number and estimated delivery or pickup details, along with options to track their order or continue shopping.
02. Explore: Concept Creation + Wireframing
The low-fidelity wireframes include an Empty Cart scenario to guide users when there are no items, a Ship to Home option for home delivery, and an In-Store Pickup layout for selecting items for pickup. The Flexible Cart integrates both shipping options, while the Edge Cases wireframe addresses potential deviations from standard flows. Lastly, the Change Store wireframe enables users to switch between different store locations easily.
High-fidelity Wireframes
