Building digital experiences to connect, uplift, and support women in all that they do.
Introduction
Victoria’s Secret & Co. is a specialty retailer of fashion-inspired clothing, intimates, accessories, fragrances, and body care products. Their goal is to help women express their confidence, sexiness, and power. The VS&Co. platforms are built to create connection and community while celebrating the extraordinary diversity of women’s experiences.
As a Lead UX Designer I focused on the larger App UX strategy, striving to meet the needs of our customers and internal stakeholders while building a sustainable and scalable app environment.
As the UX Team's App Specialist, I worked with designers across different projects to ensure consistency with iOS and Material Design App standards.
Position
Lead UX Designer
Environment
One US based UX team and one Bangalore based UX team. UX Team members are distributed across global scrum teams dedicated to app or web.
Key Responsibilities & Deliverables
Design Thinking Advocate
Plan & Facilitate Workshops
UX Process Definition
Hi-fi Screens
Epic/Feature Refinement
Requirements Gathering
Pixel Specs
Stakeholder Reviews
Information Architecture
Iteration Mapping
Wireframes & User Flows
Use-Case Identification
Information Architecture
Mentoring
Agile Process Advocate
App UX Strategy
At the time I joined VS&Co. the mobile app experience was primarily in a webview - a window to the mobile web screens within the frame of an app.
There was an incredible push to implement a fully native shopping experience. Starting from the ground up was overwhelming, but it was also a huge opportunity to build the app foundation in a scalable way.
"A wonderful interface solving the wrong problem will fail"
- Jakob Nielson, NN/g Nielson Norman Group
Before putting pixels to the screen, I used UX data, research, and applying the Self Determination Theory to the user experience of shopping on a mobile app to define how we can increase app revenue to industry standard of 40%. I found that a successful app should have the universal user needs of autonomy, relatedness, and competency as the foundation of our mobile app experience.
Once business and stakeholders were aligned on how to reach their business goals, our focus turned to concrete UI solutions.
Starting from the ground up means we needed to build the micro experiences and UI components from scratch. To ensure stability and scalability, I focused the app designers on using out-of-the-box components that are the building blocks of Material Design and the iOS Human Interface Guidelines.
Using the built in customization options available in the standard components meant less dev effort, a more stable code base, and UX designs that adhere to the expected patterns inherent to both iOS and Android devices.
Fully Native
Next we had the Herculean task of transforming every webview screen to a native experience. I collaborated closely with all the App UX designers to ensure consistency and continuity.
I personally delivered the Shop tab landing page, including training for our marketing partners who make all content decisions using the CMS.
Native Screens
