How does a new customer project typically start?
Our customer projects always start with a discovery phase during which our discovery team lays out specifications for all of the functionalities the customer needs: how to get the product data, what are the delivery methods, and so on.
Design team is involved in the customer process already in the discovery phase, either the team lead or the whole team. At Digital Goodie we strongly believe design is not something you can glue on afterwards – therefore it is, and needs to be, involved in the development work right from minute one. This discovery phase can for example be divided into four two-week sprints, of which the fourth one is committed to UX and UI.
This is where the design team steps in. We design digital solutions for some of the largest retailers in Europe, so first of all we sit down with the customer to lay out and make sure that we are closely aligned with their brand and existing business.
What happens after the discovery phase?
After the discovery, there is a UX Workshop. The workshop gathers together our design team and more people from the customer’s side: project manager, sales and marketing people as well as people dedicated to developing the company’s ecommerce and digitalization.
The object is to concretize the customer journey and the information architecture behind the whole service. When merging new digital services and components into the customer’s existing environment, every detail needs to be taken into account. This is not only for the ongoing project but also to ensure the successful deployment of possible future projects as well. We think about things like How will the navigation work? What are the most important elements of the page? What goes into the main navigation, what goes in sub navigation?
What sort of roles are there and how do you split work between you and the customer?
The customer sometimes has their own design team working on the project, in some cases they don’t. In these cases, the role of consulting from our side is very important: it is our job to bring on the table our design expertise and share our experiences to help decision making and ensure the best possible results. We also offer our UX (user experience) expertise as a service package. If the customer has their own UI (user interface) and UX teams – these two are often merged into one – we work together with them. These teams can consist of UX, UI, service and visual designers.
What are some of the most important things to take into account in the design process?
Firstly, and most importantly, we always need to keep in mind who we’re designing to. For this, we do quite a lot of background research and analyze different user groups. Based on this, we come up with three to four customer personas; representatives for the main user categories for the web store. The more details these personas entail, the more real they feel, the better. These user personas are important and we get back to them throughout the design process. It is really important that the designer doesn’t at any point start to design solely for her/himself.
Naturally we also follow the brand guidelines of our customers. It is very important that the customer is closely involved in the designing stage, so there is not a gap between what the customer wanted and expected, and the reality. In our latest project, our customers are closely involved in planning the site navigation with our design team, for instance.
Keeping a close eye on the competition is also important, we do quite a bit of benchmarking to make sure to stay on top of things.
When merging new digital services and components into the customer’s existing environment, every detail needs to be taken into account.
How is your workflow organized?
Design work does not always follow a chronological order; the best ideas can come anytime. The most important thing is to keep the ideas flowing and sketching possible solutions. Visualization helps to concretize the abstract. Our design work flow differs from the engineering teams in that the tasks are not listed as tickets (assignments). We do have a design approval list to guide our designers in their daily work.
We follow the atomic design principal which means that when building templates and pages, we start with the smallest building blocks and move on to the bigger entities. We often start with designing for mobile first.
Where do you designers get your inspiration?
All over the place, really! Inspiration can come from other designers, friends, new projects you discover in social media, exhibitions, on the street, almost everywhere.
How do you measure your results? What are your KPIs?
Conversion rate is really the only metric to measure whether the end result is successful or not. In our case it means how many products have been checked out from the online store. Although it’s great if your site is beautiful to look at, it is secondary and meaningless if your conversion rate is not at the level you want.
Another very important purpose of a successful site is to guide people to your brick-and-mortar stores – however, this is trickier to measure as the results are not measurable online.
Kreeta Ceesay is Digital Goodie’s UX Designer and has worked at the company since 2014.
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