Craft an immersive social retail experience for a luxury brand
Luxury Retail
Unlike a typical e-commerce experience, the focus of this unique experience is social engagement. Rather than solely promoting e-commerce services, the emphasis is placed on social currency, which serves as the key aspect of the user journey.
To align with the product vision, the page flow should be developed accordingly. In order to ensure a clear understanding of the experience across teams, the UX design process began by mapping out the social and e-commerce journeys separately. This approach allows for a focused and cohesive design that caters to both aspects of the user experience.
The experience prioritized social elements, such as displaying visit counts on engagement pages and encouraging comments for specific events. These features foster social interaction and engagement, enhancing the overall user experience with a dynamic and immersive environment.
Burberry was launching its first digital empowered retail store in Shenzhen, leveraging WeChat ecosystem.
At the start of the project, the detailed in-store design and operation plan had not been finalized, resulting in the digital experience design being ahead of the process. Additionally, the project team consisted of multiple teams from different companies. This required the design team to proactively communicate and coordinate with relevant departments to ensure the feasibility of the proposed experience.
Based on my long-term and trusted collaboration with Burberry, I worked as the lead designer in the project, working closely with multiple departments and agencies. My responsibilities included gathering and clarifying business requirements, prioritizing design tasks, delivering experience flows, ensuring alignment between development and design, and following up on implementation.
While the specific interior design and service experience were yet to be confirmed based on the initial store space plan, the design team in China took an active role in producing design concepts infused with insights from China's social retail experience. We worked closely with the headquarters team and led collaboration efforts with marketing and other departments to drive the project forward.
The challenging cross-functional collaboration
In a multi-team and remote collaboration environment, effective communication is key to ensure information is not missed. To achieve this, we engaged in extensive discussions and clarified the desired experience with the marketing team before starting the UX design process. We made it a priority to promptly update the team on any decisions and changes that occurred throughout the project. Additionally, we organized design documents into upcoming and confirmed sections to ensure the team was aware of potential design decisions and the technology requirements associated with them.
Encourage the social engagement
Reflect the brand style
As a part of the Burberry digital ecosystem, this WeChat Mini-Program maintains a balance between creative experiences and brand consistency. The store launch aligns with Burberry's new image for the younger generation, utilizing full-screen layouts and bold typography to reflect the brand tone.
