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Outfittery is Europe’s leading personal style service for men, currently available in eight European countries. Founded in 2012, the startups employs over 300 people in Berlin and Zurich. My first assignment as Product Designer was to redesign the user account.
Goals
After building an amazing costumer base in just four years, the Outfittery team wanted to focus on the user experience of its product. Working in close collaboration with the UX Manager, I was in charge of the digital part of it. The main objectives of the user account redesign were to
- Improve usability and user experience
- Improve mobile experience and design
- Decrease costumer support tickets
- Gather users’s information to optimize future boxes
- Increase repeat orders and boxes basket size
Getting Started
The redesign of the account was in the back log for more than one year. To get started I set off to do an audit of the account on both desktop and mobile through usability testings. I then conducted in-house interviews with our costumer support and stylist teams to get some fundamental insights on user’s main pain points. The tests and interviews highlighted most of our first hypothesis and surfaced some common threads :
- Missing crucial features
- The design is not mobile friendly
- Doesn’t adapt to user status and specific need
- There is no added value for the user
- Tangible information gathering about customers is limited
Ideation: Involving the whole company
One of the most important parts of the redesign process was to create a culture where the whole company participates in design. With the help of the UX Manager, I set up several ideation workshops that included people from all departments, from the finance team to the engineering team. During the workshops we ideated on the holistic concept behind the user account as well as specific features.
The user-account being the first step of the website re design we discussed on broader subjects than only usability and features. We questioned the way we should communicate, the way the account would allow user to connect with their stylist, or keep them coming back to Outfittery in between orders.
The workshops led to several interesting ideas that I wireframed and proposed to the main stakeholders. It included a chat-driven account, a feed-based one and a magazine-style dashboard. At the end we agreed on a fairly simple yet personalised dashboard that would adapt to each user current status. The decision was based primarily on ressource capacity and time constraint. Stakeholders also believed that a simpler account would be a good mvp to start with, without risking to confuse long-time users too much.
Designing the new user account
Make it Simple
The first step was to simplify, clarify and streamline everything. I had many options for how to display information. I knew it had to be accessible and intuitive, especially on mobile devices. The most difficult task was to create an easy and intuitive navigation.
It was essential that all information – order status and tracking, style and budget preferences, most relevant FAQ – were accessible, while maintaining simplicity as one of our fundamental design principles.
I wanted to make sure that users would be able to quickly find the right information, at the right time. Questions that seemed unimportant such as “Should the photos section be under the profile or the settings tab?” revealed to be trickier than I had thought.
Adapt to the user
Another interesting challenge here was to create an account that would adapt to each user and their specific needs. During interviews, the majority of users pointed out the lack of personalisation of their account.In collaboration with the UX Manager as well as the sales and operation team I laid out the users journey to define the communication and possible user action of all different order statuses. The hypothesis was that adaptable FAQ and relevant notifications would decrease costumer support calls and emails.
Execution
I started to lay down the foundation of the account by creating the workflow of the new account and then going into mid-fidelity wireframing. The next step was to create a prototype that we tested during users interview, followed by several rounds of iterations.
The Designs
The updated account solves most of the problems gathered from the research and stakeholders KPI’s with a much-improved content architecture as well as a cleaner and mobile friendly user interface. A clear sense of context is created with a simple navigation that displays four main sections of the account : Dashboard, About Me, Settings, Orders. To help the user feel welcome and allow him to interact, friendly language and helpers/tool tips are added throughout the experience. Finally, product-related information is added in areas that previously created question or concern.
Mobile First
78% of our visits are made through mobile devices. It was essential that the new design would be mobile first. Through a single column approach the design gets rid of unnecessary features and content and make great use of visual hierarchy.
Improved Usability
A simplified navigation and generous use of white space allow the users to find what he needs much quicker and though an improved experience. Clear error messages paired with visual feedback inform users about eventual problems and give them unambiguous steps to follow. Finally, friendlier and to-the point copy relieve users from reading too long texts.
Tailored & Personal
The new dashboard and order page adapt to each user through personal welcome messages, relevant notification and FAQ related to their current status in the experience.
Final Thoughts
The number of missing features, unforeseen challenges, such as translations in five languages, and the lack of manpower on the design and engineering team, made this first redesign project much more complex than what we initially thought.
The complexity of managing people and opinions, as well as set up design processes, overtook the difficulty to design the actual product. It was not always easy to keep my head above water in a sea stakeholders wishes, user needs, technical and branding constraints. The hardest part of this project was to balance between these three, sometimes conflicting, demands.