Goal
Launch a fully equipped e-commerce site within budget and in time for the holiday season.
Use the project as an opportunity to trial the new Uniqlo Design System (also built by Rangle).
Problem
Despite being a global fashion brand, a poor user-experience meant users were consistently frustrated. We needed to deliver an experience on-par with competitors, and overcome Uniqlo's tradition of missing project deadlines and exceeding budgets.
01/Discovery
Optimizing for agility through lean discovery
Understanding e-commerce best practice
I leveraged secondary research to inform e-commerce best practices
I led a global Uniqlo site audit to identify patterns that could be utilized for the Canadian site
I conducted a competitive analysis to ascertain industry best practices
Articulating design decisions
Uniqlo worked in a waterfall fashion, meaning design went through many layers of approval. I solved for this by:
Prototyping features, so stakeholders could clearly understand flows
Holding regular review sessions so get buy-in from key stakeholders
Designing a UI-Kit to enable us to design and build at speed
I created a UI-kit to fast track the design process.
Pixel perfection
To ensure an intuitive experience, I mapped out key task flows for the experience
Then leveraging insights from the competitive analysis and site audit, I moved straight to hi-fidelity design. I proceeded without wire-frames as the client was focused on UI quality and we had a strong library of UI patterns to work with
Mapping the gift card payment checkout flow.
The mega-menu ensured the complete range of categories could be displayed at once.
For on page navigation I utilized an accordion pattern, to allow easy switching between categories.
Resolving collaboration issues
Our team initially struggled with collaboration, working in silos rather than the deep partnership needed.
Tickets were being pushed to production without design review, adding UI-bugs to an already heavy backlog. I resolved this by pairing with engineers to review tickets before they were merged
I worked with the product manager to ensure user-stories had all the information engineers needed before the sprint started
I ran cross functional solutioning sessions to ensure engineering team buy-in before proceeding with a solution
I wrote an article sharing insights for improving design-dev collaboration based on project learnings.
Design system integration
I collaborated with the Uniqlo design system team (also a Rangle project) to stress test components and ensure they were robust enough to meet Uniqlo's needs.
