EMOTION, MOTIVATION, PERSUASION, HABIT

• Task: Find Christmas lights to purchase on both sides

1. Reactions on a visceral, behavioral, and reflective levels

The first website we looked at was Craigslist. Molly expressed shock at the simplified HTML layout of the site, and several team members expressed that it almost looked like a scam site because of the lack of graphics. Sophia, however, expressed some positive feelings towards the site because of the simplicity and layout. If you are searching for something on Craigslist, it is pretty straightforward and there are no distracting images or deals. However, there is not a great hierarchy and this site could be difficult to look through in terms of accessibility. When looking for Christmas lights, you can use the Search function, but there are not as many refined filters as online shoppers have become accustomed to given the more limited selection of items on Craigslist.

We then looked at Amazon. This website contains more brand styling than Craigslist, with the Amazon logo always featured in the top right corner and the trademark orange color is featured throughout the various pages. We liked the aesthetic feel that is associated with the continuous use of the orange color. Amazon is also more intuitive and user friendly than Craigslist, as the homepage contains information about shopping deals and a search bar that allows users to search for any item. While the website has more styling than Craigslist, we still felt overwhelmed when looking at the homepage as it seems very busy. The website did not seem very uniform, as there is not an easily accessible list of all product categories one can find on Amazon.

2. The site components / interface and interaction elements that contribute to the emotional responses

On craigslist, we interacted with search filtering options at the top left menu. There are nested dropdown categories where users can pick a city, category, and topic. From these filter options, users can see all the listings posted from the relevant context the user provided. The click space for this dropdown was very small and did not grab our attention. Sophia easily identified it because she is more familiar with the site. The rest of us needed to be directed to this filtering option. The Amazon filtering and search options are much clearer. Users can click the amazon menu and see all the different department categories. The amazon interface also guides users with proper titles and directions for users to navigate the filtering options.

On Amazon, the lack of dropdown menus that allow users to narrow down their searches creates the overwhelming feeling that we had when going on the site. You have to go through many steps to find the large list of categories to choose from. It is difficult for one to explore all the options available on Amazon when a user doesn’t even know where to start. The abundance of ads and deals that are promoted on the homepage makes the website feel busy, as the user’s attention is pulled in various directions. We did have a better reaction to Amazon than Craigslist because it contained more labels than Craigslist that helps users better understand how to navigate the website.

3. New design

• Persona

Neither Craigslist nor Amazon is intended to be used by a child, so this is the persona we are going to design for. This child persona, Dante, is ten years old and has a decent amount of tech familiarity from playing with an iPad and Zoom for school. He uses Amazon Prime and listens to music with Alexa. He likes to talk to her and ask her about the weather. Because he likes using Alexa, he wants to look at the Amazon website. However, he does not realize that when you buy something, it means his parents have to pay for it. Since his mom’s credit card is already connected to the account, he can easily make a purchase by accident. We want to design a site that is meant for children to browse and not accidentally make purchases or see things (like Craigslist missed connections/personal ads) that is not intended for them.