Shoptimal

This project explores commercial UX design in e-commerce through speculative design, using Shoptimal to provoke reflection on frictionless shopping experiences.

Grounded in a dual understanding of the user as both a consumer and a socially aware citizen, we critique how commercial UX prioritizes company interests over user autonomy, reducing user experience to transaction efficiency.

🗓️ January 2022 – July 2022 📍ITU, Copenhagen

Shoptimal is an app concept, that autonomously shops for users by analyzing their preferences via their phone’s camera and behavioral patterns. It generates a virtual wish list and orders items for the user, creating a frictionless, almost invisible shopping experience.

The goal of Shoptimal is to explore the tension between corporate interests and user needs, questioning whether UX design truly serves the user’s best interests. Through an analysis of 27 e-commerce websites, and a methological approach using speculative design we explored the world of UX conventions. By user testing we were able to reflect on how commercial UX prioritizes efficiency over user autonomy, sparking a critical conversation about the future of e-commerce through our interactive prototype.

This project follows a complete design process, moving through the key stages of discovery, definition, ideation, and delivery.

Delivery: We tested our design using Talk-Aloud Protocol and evaluated insights through five themes—Familiar but Strange, Autonomy, Trust, Consumption, and Blackboxing—delivering a critical reflection on how e-commerce UX might evolve and the implications for user autonomy.

Discovery: We began by exploring commercial UX design conventions in e-commerce, reviewing relevant literature and conducting an analysis of 27 e-commerce websites using UI theory to understand current practices.

Definition: We then defined the challenge—how to critically examine the frictionless shopping experience and the tension between corporate interests and user needs—leading to the creation of the speculative design concept, Shoptimal.

Ideation: Through brainstorming, sketching, and prototyping, we conceptualized Shoptimal as an app that autonomously shops for users, challenging conventional user control and experience.

This project spanned over four months, allowing for an in-depth exploration of the topic and a thorough design. With a clear problem definition, we began the ideation phase, where we conceptualized Shoptimal, an app-based design intended to challenge these UX conventions. This phase involved numerous brainstorming sessions, iterative sketches, and prototype development, ensuring that our concept was both speculative and grounded in a critical examination of existing UX practices resulting in Shoptimal, which we than made into an interactive prototype using figma.

This structured, iterative process over the course of four months allowed us to deliver a thoughtful and well-rounded design critique of commercial UX practices.