House2Home
Curated starter kits for new movers
A 5-day Google Design Sprint building an e-commerce concept that helps new movers decorate empty spaces with affordable, curated starter kits — without needing design expertise, time, or confidence.
Furnishing a new place shouldn't require a design degree.
New homeowners and renters feel overwhelmed decorating empty spaces — not from lack of taste, but from lack of design expertise, time, or confidence.
House2Home was a 5-day Google Design Sprint: a compressed, structured process for taking a fuzzy problem to a tested prototype in one week. I ran it solo — research, sketching, storyboarding, prototyping, and usability testing — with a new goal each day.
The brief: design a website offering affordable curated starter kits ($10–$50 items), with personalization options, that simplifies the home decoration process for people moving into a new space.
People know the look they want. They don't know what to buy.
Interviews surfaced the same tension across every participant: plenty of aesthetic inspiration, very little confidence turning that inspiration into an actual shopping list that fit a budget and an actual room.
“I know the 'look' I want... I just don't really know what products to buy.”— Deena, research participant
- Maria — budget constraints made it hard to shop for style without overspending
- Deena — knew the aesthetic she wanted but not which specific products achieved it
- Anna — uncertain how staged, photographed items would actually perform in her real space
Mapping the journey on day one.
Day one (Map) was spent end-to-end journey mapping the new-mover experience, identifying core problems, and formulating four "How Might We" questions to sketch against.
That research produced a primary persona, Ally — 23, based in Chicago — trying to find budget-friendly decorative items and achieve a specific aesthetic without extensive shopping, frustrated by not knowing how to translate Pinterest inspiration into an affordable, real-world result.
Five days, five goals.
- 01Map — end-to-end journey mapping, problem identification, four How Might We questions
- 02Sketch — competitive analysis of Heavenly, IKEA, and Pinterest, then Crazy 8s sketching into three critical screens
- 03Decide — a 10-panel storyboard visualizing the complete user journey
- 04Prototype — a high-fidelity Adobe XD prototype addressing every How Might We question
- 05Test — usability testing with five participants across six core tasks
A shoppable starting point, not a blank page.
New movers have inspiration but no confidence translating it into a real shopping cart.
Why: A moodboard gallery would have left the exact same gap — inspiration without a path to purchase. A standard storefront put the entire decorating decision back on the user. Curated kits gave people a confident starting point they could still make their own.
- Curated starter kits — predesigned by aesthetic, budget, and room type
- Customizable options — swap or remove items with price and style filters
- AR room planner — virtual furniture placement to reduce "will this actually fit" uncertainty
- Inspiration gallery — professional and user-generated designs for browsing before buying
- Clearer navigation — simplified labels and more prominent category entry points
Simpler is sometimes better.
Day five put the prototype in front of five participants across six core tasks. The clearest signal: people consistently preferred functionality over decorative flourishes, and navigation clarity mattered more to task success than visual richness.
- Simpler is sometimes better — participants preferred functionality over decorative elements
- Flow and navigation clarity proved crucial for seamless page transitions
- Sprint efficiency required prioritizing core problems over detail polish
A validated concept, with clear next steps.
House2Home was a design-sprint concept rather than a shipped product, so its validation came from the sprint's usability testing rather than live commerce metrics.
- Enhanced AI personalization for kit recommendations
- Improved AR room visualization accuracy
- Expanded customizable kit inventory
What I learned.
Simpler is sometimes better
Participants consistently preferred straightforward functionality over decorative elements — a good reminder that polish should follow clarity, not replace it.
A sprint forces real prioritization
Five days doesn't allow for indecision. Committing to one direction per day — map, sketch, decide, prototype, test — produced a sharper concept than a longer, looser timeline likely would have.
Navigation clarity is a conversion feature
In testing, task failures traced back to unclear labels and category structure more often than to the product concept itself.