Online Shopping with Smartphones

Online shopping using smartphones

Sony Entertainment Network is a digital media delivery service operated by Sony Corporation. It provides several services, including the PlayStation Network for games, an on demand Film and TV service called Video Unlimited, a cloud based service called Music Unlimited, and PlayMemories for sharing personal photos and videos.

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We were contacted by Sony Entertainment Network Europe to provide user insight around online shopping using smartphones. These findings could then be used to assist in the design requirements of future Sony projects.

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By utilising user interviews we were tasked with looking at some of the market leading online purchasing mobile sites. These sites ranged from those purely offering digital content for download to others that offered physical products. By getting users to interact with these sites we were able to find what design patterns they found easy or enjoyable to use; as well as those interaction patterns which annoyed or confused users.

Interaction patterns

For the lab based interviews we recruited 16 participants of varying ages and online purchasing patterns. These participants were then interviewed using a mixture of discussion and visual stimuli to gain understanding of their current interaction patterns with mobile purchasing sites.

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We designed a set of tasks and questions in collaboration with Sony that probed users around their present shopping and mobile usage habits as well as their expectations.

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Participants were also put in to scenarios on different mobile sites to see how easily common purchasing tasks could be completed. Participants were encouraged to verbalise any interesting points that came to mind as they interacted with the sites.

Reporting do’s and don’ts

Based on the feedback of the participants we provided Sony with a report that gave them a set of do’s and don’ts when it comes to mobile shopping sites. These findings were broken down into the specific areas that the Sony design team were most interested in understanding.

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Because we looked at a variety of sites, we were able to show Sony good and bad examples of these different areas.