The North Face Layering Tool

Using customer research to shape outcomes and reframe project deliverables.

Background

Stakeholders requested a step-by-step layering tool with the goal of educating users on the benefits of layering technical gear to encourage the purchase of multiple products together. Rather than creating a tool based on an unverified assumption, this project focused on reframing the work using business goals, customer research and testing to determine an output.

Role

As the project lead I was responsible for working with stakeholders to define outcomes and deliverables, conducting research, leading the design direction and managing a team to execute the work.

Business Goals

The objective of this project was based on education around layering products in order to increase average order value. Rather than starting with a solution I worked with stakeholders to first align on key results the project intended to address.

Feature adoption rate
Number of conversions

Research

Based on these business goals, we conducted research to understand how users shop for technical products and layering systems. This would give us insight into users mentality while shopping and help determine whether the requested experience was the best solution or if there were additional factors that needed consideration.

Key customer research findings

When shopping for technical products users want the ability to dig into the details.
Users rely on product filters to narrow down relevant products
Users consider reviews and detailed sizing information in order to make an informed purchasing decision.

Our findings showed that creating a new experience outside of the traditional shopping funnel had potential to disorient users and deprive them of the traditional tools they use to make decisions on technical products.

With this in mind we began working on a solution that would prioritize user shopping behavior.

Prototype

By focusing on the user experience on Product Landing and Product Detail Pages I led our design team in drafting prototypes that would both support the research findings and target our defined metrics.

Initial prototypes explored several design directions

Testing

We focused on analyzing several prototypes as well as testing similar functionality found across competitors sites. Findings showed increased engagement around enhanced filtering functionality within the prototypes while also improving their comprehension of product categories.

Designs

Our test results showed that prototypes of an enhanced filtering tool on the product landing page both allowed users to shop in a format that they were accustom to, while providing useful information that would supplement their understanding of our product categories. Having validated a solution we moved toward implementing the feature on the site. This involved leading a design and copy team to finalize designs and developement, and partnering with the merchandising team to determine where the feature will live and what products to highlight.

Outcomes

Originally this project was brought to our team as a solution based around recreating a product seen on other ecommerce sites. Instead we first took a step back to defined key metrics that would determine success. Then we leveraged customer research to reframe the request accounting for known customer behaviors and used early testing to a validate concept prior to implementing on the site.