From Pain Points to Design Requirements: A Qualitative Inquiry into User Interface Design for Furniture E-Commerce

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-699-9_44How to use a DOI?

Keywords

E-commerce; Furniture; User interface design; Customer journey map; B2C

Abstract

With the rapid expansion of e-commerce, the furniture industry has moved increasingly online. Yet furniture purchasing remains a high-involvement process due to experiential expectations, high prices, limited tactile feedback, and complex logistics, making interface design issues more likely to increase perceived risk. This study applies literature analysis and grounded theory to define core dimensions of e-commerce interface design and uses semi-structured interviews to uncover actual usage flows and pain points in furniture e-commerce.

A three-dimensional framework— “Information Integration,” “Navigation System,” and “Visual Perception”—was developed. Interviews with 12 Taiwanese consumers (aged 18–39) experienced in furniture e-commerce were analyzed using customer journey mapping and MAXQDA. Results reveal a six-stage user flow from homepage entry to payment, along with seven key pain points including “information presentation mismatch,” “functional limitations,” and “insufficient style consistency.” Current Taiwanese furniture e-commerce sites often increase visual inconsistency and cognitive load due to varied presentation styles and inefficient navigation categorization.

The study recommends hierarchical intelligent navigation with intuitive labeling, the application of universal design to enhance visual consistency, and standardized information tables to reduce errors—measures expected to improve the overall user experience in furniture e-commerce.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Rui Zhu
AU  - Tsz-Ching Chow
AU  - Tien-Li Chen
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/02
TI  - From Pain Points to Design Requirements: A Qualitative Inquiry into User Interface Design for Furniture E-Commerce
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 4th International Conference on Digital Economy and Management Science (CDEMS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 411
EP  - 419
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-699-9_44
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-699-9_44
ID  - Zhu2026
ER  -