Please excuse the shortness, this case study is work in progress. I'll briefly run you through the context and outcomes, and then share some collateral. If this is interesting, do get in touch!

Customer favourites were a core shopping feature on Redbubble that had languished on the legacy platform. With a goal of customer engagement and retention, we saw an opportunity to level up favourites into curated lists.

I was the product designer embedded in a cross-functional team with a product manager and 4–5 engineers, and with research support on hand.

This project involved lean research, team ideation, design exploration, prototyping and user testing, along with a quick-pivot experiment.

Through these activities we developed a shared understanding of what success would look like for customers, and I honed three core design principles for the experience.

Collaboratively, with prototypes and user feedback, I iterated towards a lightweight and fun interaction pattern underpinned by a powerful list concept.

Outcome

The new customer lists were well adopted and led to increased customer signups (+15%), conversion (+2%), and retention (+5% YoY).

Research

Internal lightweight favourites research

Understanding how people collected, used, and grouped their favourites.

Photo of a table with paper printouts of people's favourites, grouped into piles, with sticky notes labelling each pile

Landscape review

Reviewing lists and content-organising on different products and services.

Screenshot of a Confluence page with a table titled 'Wishlist review' and screenshots of lists on another website, annotated
Screenshot of a Sketch document with mobile screenshots of lists in other apps, including Google Travel Guide, Airbnb, and ASOS

Team ideation

Exploration of adding to lists in a team sketch session

A saved 'Google Jamboard' screen titled 'Lists'. There's the prompt 'How can we enable members to add 5 products to a list from a search result?', and photos of different people's ideas hand-drawn on sticky notes.

"Product demo" slides created by team members

Image of two slideshow slides, titled IMBD and Spotify, showing screenshots of lists in those products and some notes.

Strategy & Design Principles

Key design principles

I defined and honed these principles based on research and our team discussions.

Slideshow slide, showing three design principles: 'Lightweight: Keep it quick, easy and fun to save things', 'Useful: Help people (re)discover things they love' and 'Rewarding: An experience that gets better and better'.

Rewarding customers

I recommended an engaging reward loop and value-add for our customers.

Slideshow slide, titled 'Save-Discover Loop'. An illustration shows a person saving to lists over time, getting recommendations that help them save more, and the resulting purchases.

Interaction Patterns & Visual Concepts

CodePen demo of an add-to-list interaction pattern to test speed and responsiveness.

Screenshot of a CodePen demo, with a mocked search results page, a result that has just been favourited, and a notification saying 'Saved to favourites'.

Exploring the underlying lists data model and architecture, and the implications for customers

Photo of sticky notes arranged in a grid, titled 'Fave Specificity', and locations for saving across the top (Explore, Search Results Page, Product Page, etc), and three types of favourites down the left (Artwork, Product, Configured Product). There are ticks and crosses in the grid, depending on which location leads to which favourite type.

Photo of a notebook sketch, titled 'App to Web', with information about what data is saved on each. There's also a list of UX principles, questions about deprecation of the old favourites model, notes about 'high fidelity saving', and in the middle there's a 'thinking face' emoji

Refined designs for add, remove, create, change and view lists on mobile.

Screenshot of a design file with 'Add to List', 'Create List', 'Change List' and 'View List' mobile flows in high fidelity

Final concepts for viewing a list, and a favourites-only MVP

Screenshot of a design file, showing the 'View list' and 'View favourites' screens on desktop on mobile

Lists, IRL

Screen capture of customer lists being used on the Redbubble website, including creating a list, adding to a list, and viewing the list

Creating, adding to, and viewing lists.

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Thanks for reading! Perhaps you might like to see my other work or get in touch?