https://www.graceatweedie.com/designservices daily 0.75 2024-11-19 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1716322338161-TBHS0F42JW9UUH4JV5VG/Wayfair+Design+Services.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545001619283-4Y7990T8H9NWUZU91NUU/cover.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - The Context In 2018, one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home, announced that its e-design platform was now available to millions of shoppers on Wayfair.com. Starting at $79 for a one-room project, Design Services connects interior designers with Wayfair customers who are looking for a convenient and affordable design solution as they shop for their homes. The Goal Through this service, Wayfair sought to enhance the shopping experience for its millions of customers by offering personalized design solutions tailored to their specific needs and preferences. Beyond offering Wayfair customers an affordable, best-in-class solution to create a home they love, Design Services created a platform for interior designers to expand their portfolios by tapping into the growing e-design market. The Approach We basically worked as a small start up within a large organization. Our process was lean, scrappy and fast paced. We had a mission to launch a brand new business from the ground up, on a tight timeline and budget. There were three core products we needed to build to make this happen: 1. The Customer Experience 2. The Interior Designer Experience 3. Business Operations Experience I was the Design Lead responsible for the entire customer-facing experience and worked closely with the designers of the interior designer experience and the business operations experience to design a holistic system in which our three products worked seamlessly together. We worked on an agile scrum team consisting of three product designers, three product managers, six developers, and one content strategist. We partnered closely with our business stakeholders, operations team, in-house interior designers, user research, QA, data analytics, creative, legal and other cross functional product teams. The Outcome Within a quarter, we successfully designed, built and launched a profitable interior e-design service, reaching millions of Wayfair shoppers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545497653793-VZ5321WNHK0YG3HAWU3D/Group+85.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - The Discovery Phase In our beginning stages, we used various methods to gain an empathic understanding of the problem we were trying to solve. We looked at our competitors thoroughly, experiencing and analyzing pain points and key moments of delight. Havenly, Decorist and Modsy were the leaders in the space. My manager and I even went to a Havenly pop up store in Boston for research. We offered a free service to our employees and their family and friends for our Beta launch. We surveyed these users to understand what interested in them in the service and what factors were important to them during the process. We held stakeholder interviews asking the “5 Why’s” to understand the business goals and how they correlated with our customers and interior designers goals. We also interviewed our interior designers to under their design process and the information and tools they need to complete quality projects easily and efficiently. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545278753850-AJG77WBTNUJJ16QW4LJ6/design+services%402x.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Defining the Product After a month of research and analyzing learnings from our beta launch, the design team aligned with our stakeholders on a direction for MVP of our initial soft launch. This site map depicts at a high level the IA, framework and features sets that our team needed to design and build. This allowed us to prioritize, create a timeline and determine our launch date. Some examples of features we built include: A style survey, a collaboration portal, a messaging center, a product details quick-view, and much more. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545497637603-3R4ZHVMNZMVJGDURR4SB/Group+66.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Ideation, Prototyping and User Testing We spent the next few months ideating, prototyping, user testing, iterating and eventually moving feature sets incrementally into development. I worked closely with product, development and our business stakeholders to prioritize the features and accurately determine the scope of the work. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1544930307276-QOPSS8W2XDA90DOTZH51/Screen+Shot+2018-12-15+at+10.09.35+PM.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Collaboration Portal Interaction Concepts The goal of the collaboration portal was to let the client view a rendering of their design concept, review a shopping list and message their designer, all in one view. I explored several different interaction concepts balancing these three core Jobs-to-Be-Done. Our first concept was a tagging system. A designer would apply product tags to the concept image so that when the client received the concept, they would be able to click directly on the hot spots on the image and see product details. They also would be able to message their designer, while being able to see their concept image and shopping list. Ultimately, due to tech and time constraints, we went with a simplified approach. Instead of making the concept images interactive with product tags, the designer would create a shopping list utilizing the Wish List feature that Wayfair already had. When the client received their concept, they would see a large concept image, a prompt to rate it and give feedback, with a shopping list directly below. We were able to utilize our existing product card components for the shopping list and utilized our drawer (modal) component for the message center. While you weren’t able to message, view product details and see the concept image all in one view, we decided that was not necessary for the product to be usable and the scope trade off made sense. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1544930307071-HKFTQ9OL63QQK7OWAMX7/Screen+Shot+2018-12-15+at+10.17.35+PM.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Guided Feedback When a designer sends a client a concept, the client reviews the concept with a star rating and then uses both guided prompts and open inputs to leave feedback. The goal of the guided feedback concept was to: • Help clients articulate what they like or don’t like about a concept. • Make sure designers received actionable, formatted feedback. • Ensure projects had a stopping point by enforcing a rating for each concept with up to two revisions. Ultimately, we decided to use a smiley face rating scale instead of stars because they felt more fun, conversational and were not to be confused for product star ratings on Wayfair. I also had fun designing the smiley faces :) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545503948171-LID0W7H1V11XX036X7S1/Group+68.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - "We Are Never Done" Shortly after our launch, we took a step back and mapped out the entire customer journey in its current state. This workshop served as an exercise and tool to get the entire team and stakeholders alined on our current understanding of the customer journey and help to identify where we should begin to iterate and make improvements. We were able to identify pain points and high value pivotal movements throughout the customer journey through our project reviews, user interviews and analytical data. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545275824573-OCB2TF2N35BLLJOMIMAN/Landing.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Landing Page https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1546445829695-RJPOP1EW3NB038GW2E6H/Group+80.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - iOS Onboarding https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1544988959248-173S09T9LVX50AUPXP18/Group+60.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Package Selection https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1544988965822-KK866NYX9P8TQYP8AIBG/Group+62.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Concept Review https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1544989133353-TZH4TRDTV107GGG58LJJ/packages.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Product Details "Quick View" https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545276307108-WWUWONXI3L6DDXEW3HLN/messages.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Message Center https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545280354290-D7XEC3D8I98PYJFGDIB9/packages.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Project Complete https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545055987293-F4KO4N3VKPLB30JUFBJN/Group+81.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 - Mobile Web Responsive https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545276156252-6UW9EPU1Q6SJ4V09WEL1/Group+13.png Launching an E-Design Business from 0-1 https://www.graceatweedie.com/buddie daily 0.75 2024-03-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1528601224220-IQCQZKHKAPKFWCRNTT0K/Buddie.png Buddie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545013937325-KFJDI89FI7CVURFXA4ZA/Group.png Buddie - Project Overview In 2017, while I was working at Wayfair, two developers on my team approached me looking for a freelance designer for their new business idea: buddie. The idea was to create a platform for customers to browse local marijuana dispensaries, order for pick up or delivery, and submit payment – all online. In turn, build a platform for dispensaries to sell their product and manage their stores. The Goal Marijuana dispensaries were starting to become more popular and legalized in more states but there wasn’t a convenient way to find or shop them yet. We basically wanted to create an Uber Eats for dispensaries. The Approach We were in our early 20’s and none of us had ever done anything like this so the approach was super scrappy. The three of us worked together to define, plan and prioritize the features for their demo. Their goal was to sell the product before recreational weed sales became legal in MA the following year. I designed the logo, branding and identity. We used the free plan on inVision to collaborate. Since there were no competitors in the space yet, I took a lot of inspiration from Uber Eats and Doordash for the experience and looked at online dispensary menus for content. From there, I leveraged all of my ecommerce knowledge I gained at Wayfair and applied it to buddie. The Outcome I designed an entire customer facing marketplace for dispensaries. I also designed a business platform for dispensaries to manage their stores through a content management system. The demo was built but unfortunately the business plan faced too many challenges with regulations and legalities and the project was abandoned. We all had fun and learned a lot though :). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1530805517674-QUI3OZUM4CTOPQALMAU3/landing.png Buddie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1530805512884-G3OJRJIA1YW8ZTLGLNHI/1.png Buddie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1530805512495-QJL43BHCZR5CQ71HELUF/2.png Buddie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1530805513797-19KA66FV3OQ0RUNPT65V/3.png Buddie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1530805514009-TUZHE1YVFWGCDNOOJZKP/4.png Buddie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1530805517447-FT2L7J52POEVU8G7M970/MW.png Buddie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1530805518714-W095NWJOXV4OILQFQGV5/dashboard.png Buddie https://www.graceatweedie.com/work daily 1.0 2025-02-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1732032549788-MKIFDN4QFQ0KJVHK9VUF/New+Member.png Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1732059955690-K6PUQGAT77SYT3NRJ9I1/Homepage.png Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1732152314150-IOXDRTB5LVHF7DDH0EFM/New+Member.png Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1732160552887-8LG7N78S4XDLNU76YGMJ/Loyalty.png Work https://www.graceatweedie.com/kayak-reviews daily 0.75 2024-04-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712420435863-H7ADC2WHDLCY25AO33QZ/KAYAK+Reviews+Cover.png KAYAK Reviews https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712419390886-BHF0PH0F5DF89VOPLVTX/Group+63.png KAYAK Reviews - The Context KAYAK is a travel search engine for flights, hotels, rental cars and more. KAYAK users rely heavily on reading reviews when making travel plans and KAYAK relies on their user base to contribute these reviews. The Goal In 2018, KAYAK was going through a massive tech refactor and design system adoption. The form for users to leave a review needed to be refactored, and I wanted to take the opportunity to optimize the design as well. The current design was an overwhelming, single page form with outdated styles and patterns. The goal was to increase user review submissions, optimize for accessibility and remove friction. The Approach I designed a progressive disclosure flow that allows users to focus on one section of user inputs/actions at a time, helping to reduce cognitive load. We were asking users for a lot, and so we needed to make it seem as easy as possible and guide them through one step at a time. I took a lot of inspiration from the Airbnb review form because they ask several questions (way more than KAYAK) while still making it feel easy and delightful to complete. I also made sure to adopt KAYAK’s design system principles: • Use typography and spacing to create visual hierarchy • Embrace a 'less is more' mindset towards color • Design like you're having a conversation • Delight the user with the details • Apply imagery to context I designed the smiley face rating scale and incorporated illustration for delight. I used large bold typography and lots of white space to create a visual hierarchy and give some space to breathe. I used a large inspirational image to set context. I collaborated with our ux writer to make the design feel conversational. The copy encourages the user to leave a review and makes the user feel appreciated for taking the time to leave a review. Lastly, I adopted KAYAK’s design system, ensuring that all styles and components were modernized. The Outcome We successfully launched the new and improved review form on web, iOS and android platforms. Review submission rate increased, submission completion rate increased and number of submissions per session increased. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712421047359-1K9TBXVDNZ3V8QYK5O0P/1.png KAYAK Reviews - After: Desktop https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712416043423-KYIIAT41PXJJ1NTUKM2I/image-asset.png KAYAK Reviews - After: Mobile https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545333677446-KA8L87NSZQM86P3861SU/Desktop+-+Hotel+review+form.png KAYAK Reviews - Before: Desktop https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545333677441-9SRETXA0RJZYVW0VNFPQ/Mobile+-+Hotel+review+form.png KAYAK Reviews - Before: Mobile https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545277364578-HSTWUFTN0BQSEMHUXV3E/smileys.png KAYAK Reviews https://www.graceatweedie.com/kayak-booking daily 0.75 2024-04-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712085001185-YC6OLJCBBAWVGL213AFL/Kayak+Booking+Cover.png KAYAK Booking https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712418299029-3M0W9LJ7HRYSA9A1UY2I/Group+63+Copy.png KAYAK Booking - The Context KAYAK is a travel search engine. Users use the search engine to search for flights, and then get taken to either the airline website or booking website to book their flight. While most users do not book their flight on KAYAK, they do offer an in house booking option for certain flights. This booking flow benefits KAYAK users in a number of ways including saved traveler information, paying in installments, trip planning tools, travel guides and more, all on one platform. The Problem In 2018, the booking flow hadn’t been updated in years and was in need of some love. The tech needed to be refactored and we were breaking several UX best practices. The experience was functional, but less than optimal: a single page, loaded with input fields, up-sells and information. We took this opportunity to optimize the tech and the design of the booking flow. The Approach I began with a Jobs-to-be-Done brainstorm with my product manager, lead engineer and user research lead, to align on all the core features and edge cases. I then did competitive research on several booking sites. I found that most airline booking sites offered less than optimal user experiences and I was excited to make ours better. I based a lot of the design off Google Flights but also specifically researched booking and form best practices and made sure to incorporate them where Google was not. My goal was to make the booking flow as usable, accessible and frictionless as possible. I designed a progressive disclosure booking flow that allows users to focus on one section of user inputs/actions at a time, helping to reduce cognitive load. I added a “review trip” page prior to “continuing to checkout”. This page is intended to provide users with their flight details and fare families, giving them the confidence and information they need to proceed to booking. Our hypothesis was that users who click “view deal” from the results page, are looking for more details and not necessarily ready to book – therefore creating a high bounce rate from the booking flow. Lastly, I adopted KAYAK’s design system, ensuring that all patterns and components were modernized. The Outcome We successfully rolled out the new and improved booking flow across all platforms: desktop, mweb, iOS and android. Conversion rate increased and bounce rate decreased. We also increased marketing email sign ups, and logged in users states. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1544987562181-M5MQHR1PQYXX0SX8XO6E/Group+89.png KAYAK Booking - Jobs-to-be-Done Brainstorm https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545318176393-9D4KZGF71J8HRK560JLV/Screen+Shot+2018-12-20+at+10.02.03+AM.png KAYAK Booking - Low Fidelity Booking Flow https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545278873754-0WMJ85CJGP3Y9M7SLQUH/whisky+site+map%402x.png KAYAK Booking - Information Architecture https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712417633711-JF8JZPBPC4FDUD2MQ7I0/Review+Trip.png KAYAK Booking - Review Your Trip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712417671672-9C5QIX2DEHHF8XEP8MKS/Sign+in.png KAYAK Booking - Sign In or Continue as Guest https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1544897036411-17HFY7QUSV0PTYY41JXE/Review+Trip.png KAYAK Booking https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712417598684-JIJF15R55B1F8KOZMX2I/traveler+details.png KAYAK Booking - Traveler Details https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712417696136-5WKSIRPYKQVXSJ373146/select+seats.png KAYAK Booking - Payment https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712063583131-WARQY95ECPECF0G0MLV7/Group+52+Copy+3.png KAYAK Booking - Seat Selection https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712417732023-ADGXWB25KIEZIGQ1U1N3/Review.png KAYAK Booking - Review and Book https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1712418038378-CUYKP7SP575E9OMUGK5Y/Group+73.png KAYAK Booking - Responsive Mobile Web https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54e40febe4b056b9f067b52f/1545331616394-4K5K0X50KM6G5GKI5IGX/screencapture-kayak-SNflightreservation-2018-12-20-10_59_05.png KAYAK Booking - Before https://www.graceatweedie.com/about-1 daily 0.75 2024-11-26