Have you compiled your party planning checklist yet? What is the one essential item left to secure your perfect event?

Overview

“Party with Me” is a local party-supply business that wanted to bring the personalised experience of their small physical store online. During the pandemic, the business identified an opportunity to offer customers a convenient way to browse and purchase party supplies while continuing to provide the inspiration and personal service they valued in-store.

The goal was to design a user-friendly e-commerce experience that made it easy for customers to find the right products, discover inspiration and confidently complete their purchases — without losing the charm and personal feel of a small local business.

Problem

Party planning can be time-consuming. Users often arrive with a specific theme, colour palette, shopping list or budget in mind, but finding the right combination of products online can quickly become overwhelming.

Research also highlighted that users wanted more than simply a catalogue of products. They were looking for inspiration, reassurance and assistance throughout the planning and purchasing process.

Party with Me therefore needed an e-commerce experience that could balance two seemingly different needs: helping users find exactly what they were looking for quickly, while also encouraging them to explore, discover and be inspired.

Challenge

• How might we recreate the personalised “small shop” experience online?

• How might we make it effortless for users to find products based on product type, colour, theme or occasion?

• How might we inspire users when they know what they need but are struggling for ideas?

• How might we give users enough product information and imagery to feel confident purchasing online?

• How might we make it easy for users to review their selections against their shopping list and budget before checking out?

Role and Responsibilities

This was a solo UX/UI project completed within a two-week design sprint, with limited resources and a desktop-first approach.

Deliverables

• Screener survey and user interviews

• Long-form survey

• Affinity mapping

• User journey mapping

• Persona development

• Competitive & comparative analysis

• Card sorting

• Information architecture

• Problem statement

• User flows

• Sketching and wireframing

• High-fidelity interactive prototype

• Moderated usability testing

• Iterations based on testing insights

“Users knew what they wanted — but they still wanted inspiration.”

Discover + Define

I started by trying to understand the people behind the party-planning process, rather than immediately designing the e-commerce experience.

A screener survey was sent to 19 participants, helping identify 8 suitable party planners for further research. The research indicated that small-event planning was often undertaken by women organising celebrations for family and friends, although the motivations and circumstances varied.

Due to the two-week timeframe, I conducted 5 user interviews alongside a longer survey to gather additional quantitative and qualitative insights.

Several themes emerged.

Users were increasingly comfortable shopping online, but the time and effort involved in finding the right products could discourage them from purchasing. While many arrived with a fairly clear idea of what they wanted, they also wanted inspiration to help develop their ideas and discover products they hadn't considered.

One particularly important insight was that:

6 out of 8 users wanted inspiration while planning their party.

This created an interesting UX opportunity. Party with Me wasn't simply selling party supplies — it could also become a source of inspiration and guidance for people planning an event.

Conclusion

This project reinforced for me that a successful e-commerce experience isn't simply about making products easy to buy. It's about understanding how people make decisions and designing the experience around those behaviours.

Party planners often have a list, a theme and a budget — but they also want to be inspired.

The challenge was therefore to create a balance between efficiency and discovery: helping users find exactly what they came for while creating opportunities to discover something new.

User research and usability testing were particularly valuable in uncovering the small interaction expectations that aren't always obvious from the outset — from clickable imagery and navigation states to the way users interpret product information and inspiration.

Key Learnings

• More extensive user interviews would have provided a broader representation of party planners across different ages, genders and planning behaviours.

• Contextual inquiry and ethnographic research could have provided deeper insight into how people actually plan and shop for events.

• Assumption mapping earlier in the process could have helped refine the research questions.

• With additional time, A/B testing could have helped validate different approaches to product discovery and navigation.

Most importantly, the project demonstrated the value of research-led design within tight constraints. Even within a two-week sprint, combining research, competitive analysis, information architecture, prototyping and usability testing allowed me to move beyond designing an attractive interface and instead create an experience grounded in real user needs.