Design Leadership
at ZALORA

From end 2022 - Today

Role

Head of Product Design
Head of User Insights

About ZALORA

ZALORA is the leading e-commerce platform in fashion and lifestyle in South-East Asia. We have over +3000 brands, over 55 million visits and over 4 million active users per month across 6 SEA markets. 

In my role as Head of Product Design here,  I get to manage the design and user insights team including individuals contributors and managers.

Context

This is an overview of some key initiatives I drove in the past 2 years. I joined the team in 2022 with the mandate to level up the design quality. However, design quality was not the only problem. Repeat work, lack of insights driven decision making were some of the issues to tackle. So in parallel with me joining and kicking off the first design projects, I also invested heavily in building up a solid design organisation.

Some key initiatives included:

(2022-2023)

  • A Refresh of the Brand Experience, which included formalising the Design System
  • A new Homepage with personalised content & recommendations 
  • A revamp of our Product Presentation page
  • ‍A revamp of the "New Customers" journey‍
  • Optimising our Cart and Checkout flow‍
  • Overseeing the launch and experience design of our AI powered Chatbot & Personal Shopper‍
  • Paper Cuts Squad: Set up a product squad to tackle adhoc UX issues across the journey
  • Setting up a Competency Framework & a culture of Design Reviews

I will cover here the Refresh of Product Experience, Competency Framework, and Paper Cuts Squad.
(but am happy to dive deep in any of the other projects upon request)

ZALORA 2.0

Zalora 2.0 was a refresh to the entire user experience across all touchpoints. Our goal was to create a more premium experience, with a focus on fashionability through a clean design language, bolder use of color, imagery and fashion forward look and feel.

I led the design direction of all new features launched under the umbrella of Zalora 2.0 - including iOS and Android app, tablet and desktop redesigns across the entire funnel.

KEY FIGURES:
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30% + higher homepage engagement
2.5% 2.5% uplift in Catalog CTR
7.3% uplift in PDV ATC
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Competency framework

When I arrived at Zalora, I realized that roles were not super clear, processes were inconsistent, which in turn led to inconsistent quality levels. The teams complained that the growth paths were not clear. So I worked with industry peers, friends and colleagues to draft an understanding of up to date, best practices for a clear career ladder for product designers.

The process was iterative, and after a few rounds of improvement we managed to align on the levels, competency areas and clear expectations for each of those levels.

The second step was implementing these and paying close attention to how these were received. I had both 1:1 conversations as well as team wide workshops to introduce the new framework, and started piloting these in 2022.

Paper Cuts Squad

While the big projects we focused on were super important, because of legacy issues and shifting priorities, there were a lot of small-medium user experience improvements that had fallen throigh the cracks.

I partnered with our heads of engineering and created a squad we called the paper cits squad. (A nod to the "death by a thousand papercuts" concept of small issues adding up to a subpar user experience.)

We set it up to run in parallel from the main product squads, and created a process to constantly look across app reviews, customer service reports and user insights to collate and priorotisr the issues that kept coming up in cross-team workshops.

We added it in our company OKRs for Q2 and set a goal to tackle 10 paper cuts in that first quarter. We managed to hit 12, and amped up our goal to 15 for Q3, 2024.

Design Muscle building

We invested in the usuals to amp up continuous improvement and collaboration. I introduced regular design reviews and critiques and team meetings, creating a structured space for open and constructive feedback. Getting these to be consistent was tough, as it was a big change from the status quo, but we immediately saw benefits from getting designs in front of others as well as setting a clear design language across the product.  It did wonders for consistency too.

At the same time, I also set up visits to our Warehouses, and other parts of the business that we usually don't get access to as designers working on the B2C squads. This was great for the team (aside from fun!) it helped us raise questions around how we deliver the services we design everyday. It helped us establish relationships with internal teams and helped shift to a more "zoomed-out" mindset.

All these things came together to create a more collaborative team and an overall uplift in design quality.
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On Impact

On my role to lead the design team, I drove a major redesign, including revamps of the Homepage, Product Presentation, Cart, Checkout and various Post-purchase flows. These are all live today.

Use insights wise, together with the team we managed to set up a user insights practice, including user power panels and company wide insights sharing. (see next case study)

Internally, I drove the product strategy and roadmap creation, which contributed to company-wide OKRs. This helped greatly with the product team's positioning in the larger organization.
Next Case Study:
Setting up a User Insights Practice >