Design Leadership
at ZALORA

From end 2022 - Today

My Role

Head of Product Design
Head of User Insights

Duration

~3 years (ongoing)

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.

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. This included: ways or working, design culture, etc, so in parallel with kicking off design projects, I also invested heavily in building up a solid design organisation.

Key initiatives include:

(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

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 consulted industry peers, friends and colleagues to draft an up to date, best practice-led 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.
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KEY FIGURES:
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100% Adoption across the org
‍PLUS adoption globally to Australian sister org
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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 through the cracks.

I partnered with our heads of engineering and created a squad we called the paper cuts squad. (A nod to the "death by a thousand paper cuts" 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 prioritise the issues that kept coming up in cross-team workshops.

We added it in our company OKRs for Q3 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 Q4, 2024.
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KEY FIGURES:
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+12 Paper cuts tackled across journey in first quarter of pilot
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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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