Stylist Journey Research
Zalando - Style Advice
* Brand: Zalando / Style Advice
* Role: Senior Product Designer
* Problem/Opportunity Tackled:
To understand the challenges and opportunities within the journey of Zalando Style Experts. With the insights generated, ideate and prioritize actions to create an improved journey.
* Methodology & Contribution:
Planned, carried out and synthesized an ethnographic research study with a group of stylists in their working environment. Involved all stakeholders responsible (product to engineering) and facilitated a large-scale ideation workshop covering different work streams within Style Advice organization.
1. Ethnographic Study Setup
Stylists (new stylists, ex-stylists, top stylists) were visited at their working environment (home/cafe/co-working space) for an extensive 1.5 hr long discussion was carried about. Ethnographic study was utilized in order to better understand the emotional/behavioral implications of the current working model.
2. Collecting Visual Evidence
Most stylists were observed to carry on 2-3 jobs at the same time. Their hobbies and occupations were used as an inspiration for ideation around future working models. The research has not only influenced its own outcomes, but also has been utilized in other projects within Zalon.
3. Synthesis
Research notes were synthesized on participant, stylist-type and journey substage level with the collaboration of all interviewer/note-takers. The visual cues gathered attention from all stakeholders in the office, who are not usually in contact with customers.
4. Journey Website & Prints
A website containing journey maps for different type of stylists (and all stylists) was prepared and shared out prior to the ideation workshop. The website/print materials were later found very useful for documentation and onboarding.
5. Ideation Workshop
Supported with peers from Zalando product design team, I ran an ideation workshop with 35+ attendees from different parts of the organization. Participants were first introduced to the findings, and followed by 4 parallel ideation boards representing different journey stages.
6. Idea Prioritization
With the collaboration of engineers and product, the list of ideas generated during the workshop went through an initial prioritization via impact/feasibility scoring. Top 3 ideas were presented as concept papers to the strategy chapter.
REFLECTIONS:
Being my initial project within Zalando, I couldn’t imagine a better start, where I enjoyed the collaboration with many peers across the organization and learned about company-specific methodologies. Being in Berlin, and visiting stylists at their real life setup was also an experience itself. I have been in many research studies before, but planning/recruiting-interviewing-synthesis-ideation all being led by myself was a valuable experience. Seeing the customer focus spread around the organization, having my colleagues motivated in the new projects was unexpected positive outcomes that I had the chance to observe.
