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Wish ATL
The Details
01.
A new kind of
e-commerce

Any general search for online consumer shopping habits and you’ll quickly note 
the frustration referred to as “tab hell”. A buyer browses an online store, opening up each item that catches their eye in a new tab to sift through later, a pattern that isn’t optimal but something that most of us still do. The online marketplace is also inundated with products and a simple Google search for Nike sneakers will yield millions, if not billions of results. Right from Google, before a customer even opens your site, they’re opening up several other websites simultaneously and browsing that same product across many other stores. Our first challenge, how do we keep customers engaged in Wish ATL and focused on the products on Wish’s site? How do we give them exactly what they’re looking for here and now and allow them to forget the other seven open tabs?  This is a challenged faced by many retailers today yet most stay true to the tried and tested patterns followed by all online stores, Wish ATL was trying to change the norm and lead the way to trial a new way to shop online, willing to learn and iterate as we went.

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"This happens every time. I have never encountered an online shopping site that effectively deals with the issue of having to open products in separate tabs."

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An audit of the current website experience

Knowing that we had an engineering team ready and waiting, I did an audit of their current site taking into consideration our goals for this project and improvements we’d need to make along the way, providing both short and long term adjustments that we’d need to make. For example, customers could only purchase a single pair of sneakers, however there was a quantity field on the item that allowed them to check out with multiple, regardless of the design direction this was one of the many interactions we needed to update. This helped prevent both our customers from feeling frustrated that their order was cancelled and saved employees time in having to cancel an order and explain why to the customer.

Existing experience
The existing experience lacked the uniqueness and creativity of the brand and it's in-store experience, repeating information and layouts between every page and quickly becoming static and losing a customer's interest.
How do we keep customers engaged with wish atl and loyal to the brand?

In parallel with the designs, Wish ATL was also trialing a rewards program to keep customers returning to the brand. Events themed around the next sneaker drop tend to attract celebrities and influences from across the country, meaning they were the place to be seen at for customers but also, events were sometimes the only way you could guarantee yourself access to the product being dropped too. Given the exclusivity of these events, part of the loyalty program planned to reward customers with tickets and presale options for future sneaker drops, keeping them returning to and purchasing from the store. Since rewards were becoming increasingly important for the brand, we explored ways to highlight its importance online too.

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Where we brought traces of the physical store into the digital experience

Early on in the process I met with the team to walk through the store and experience all the intricies they’d weaved throughout. The blue wave in the carpet was a subconcious path that customers walked along and followed, flowing past the shiny metalic surfaces contrasted next to the overly fluffy display cabinents, the store was previously a library so the staircase is made entirely of books that were once there to be read, going down the stairs is as if you’re going through the books into another realm. There are also subtle illustrations in the wallpaper and a not so-subtle wall decorated with thousands of shoelaces, hiding the entrance way to the back office but also reminiscent of a tv screen and the pixelated view you’d see once the signal was lost. All these hidden elements (and more) the team had asked to be incorporated into the site, however I trusted my gut and working with them, realised they wanted this experience of finding small easter eggs throughout, with connections to the roots of the city and it’s customers, not a carbon copy from the physical to the digital.

The fitting room & custom backgrounds
We wanted this to feel like it belonged to the customer, that this was their corner within the company. We created a space for them to graffiti or paint the background on top of the illustrations and texture inspired by the physical store.

The blue path is represented in the navigation, the blue colour highlighting where you are and your next step (CTAs) and the various textures throughout the store translated into background patterns, utilising the same illustrations and a peg-board like appearance with both rigid outlines and free form graffiti pens. (The graffiti also paying homage to their physical location, where graffiti artists regularly paint over the side of the store). We had planned for the page to load in pixels too, replicating that of the meaning behind the shoelace wall and when customers navigated between the pages, we’d zoom out, weave through a “story”, and then hone back into a new area of the site, almost like passing down the stairs into that new realm.

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“You wouldn’t immediately go try on the first item you like in a store without looking around at the other things you may want to try on.”

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Where we brought traces of the physical store into the digital experience

The fitting room concept was an idea the team was drawn too and committed to trying, with a belief that in the future, this could evolve into an  AR focused experience with customers digitally trying on the products from home. My challenge was how to make this work in a world where AR isn’t quite as accessible just yet. The result was a place where customers could collect and share the items, rotating and resizing items to look at the details of the product and compare and contrast them side by side before adding them to the cart. An experience we hoped could replace the idea of opening multiple tabs to complete the same task. We also wanted this to be personal to the customer, so we introduced the ability to customise/graffiti the background, snapshot items or outfits to share to social media and to pull in previously purchased items to get a sense of how their wardrobe could look. There were multiple closets available too, for example Friday Night, Wedding Attire or Summer 2021 depending on the look or style the customer was going for and these could easily be accessed by an in-store salesperson to help curate and advise customers on new pieces if requested.

Interacting with items in the fitting room
Items in the fitting room are being added to the cart, noting the preselected size. Where we could we tried to streamline checkout, preselecting previously purchased sizes, suggesting colour ways based off order history and saving cart information and preferences.

Given how quickly sneakers can sell out, it was also important that we weren’t creating an additional required step before checkout, meaning adding an item to the fitting room was optional. Alongside this, we also created a more seamless buy now button for customers signed in to their loyalty accounts to allow them to  purchase an item with a single click.

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Engineering implications and Halting the project

In the end, this result was too large of a project for the engineering agency that had been contracted from the beginning to be able to deliver. Based on early conversations and their portfolio, I had raised concerns to the team but was assured they'd signed a contract and promised they could complete it. We held weekly syncs with the team and documented updates and new requirements regularly, however ultimately the engineering team backed out, stating it was beyond their skillset and they couldn't outsource it further. Unfortunately this placed the project on an indefinite hold which is where it still stands today.

Drake

My two motivations were to try something new, something different. & then secondly, to design something with no restrictions & that goes purposefully against the refined identities we're all accustomed to. (Also, it helps that I'm not-so-secretly a big Drake fan).
2018
Personal project
Motion design
Art direction
I wouldn't hesitate to say that most of my design work has been created whilst listening to at least one of Drake's albums, on repeat. Some people see colour when they listen to music, some people can't stop tapping their feet, but being a designer to the heart, I honestly started to see type whilst listening to his music. I imagined it moving and animated and saw this as the perfect opportunity to dip my feet into animation and learn motion design. Making what I saw in my mind a reality was a completely different ball game though.
The motto
The full animated 38 seconds of lyrics, excerpt from Drake's "The Motto"
Objective *//
Step outside my comfort zone and explore design styles I'm unfamiliar with
Learn After Effects and how to implement my own ideas as they pertain to motion
Create something With  no boundaries & something design books may frown upon
How you feel
Excerpt #1 from the full video.
Pass it like a relay
Excerpt #2 from the full video, experimenting more with the colour palette.
My team good
Excerpt #3 from the full video.
Okay, Okay
Excerpt #4 from the full video, specifically looking at transitions and how one scene needs to lean into the next.
Personal
reflection *//
This came at a time where I wasn't sure what I wanted to pursue next within my career, and I was frustrated in my role at the time, especially at the amount of rules and red tape we had to fight through with every decision. I was listening to Drake everyday, and I'd always wanted to learn motion design but just opening up After Effects had been overwhelming. Given a new found determination (and friends that were willing to teach me) I decided to give it a go. I wanted to break every rule I was trying to so hard to follow in my day to day role, opting for the brightest, most garish set of colours and clashing typefaces that I could find, telling myself that it might looks terrible and be a disaster, but that was the point.
Explorations
Since this was my first time working with motion, I started designing the way I knew how, which was artboards and static images. This helped me establish colours, layouts, fonts, etc but I quickly realised elements needed to look good getting to and from this position, as well, animation isn't just a single snap shot of a moment in time.
I stepped out of my comfort zone entirely with this project to do craft something that didn't match anything else I had in my portfolio at the time. To this day, this is still the project I get asked the most questions about and the project that attracts the most freelance clients (more than 5 years later). Creatively this was perhaps one of the most personally rewarding, showing myself that whatever I did day to day didn't impact or limit my design abilities, and that rules are there both for a reason, but to also be challenged, pushed and broken as well.
Impact & outcomes *//
Establish a new way to shop online that's hands on and geared towards a future AR reality
Bring to life the spirit of the recently refurbished store into the e-commerce store
Work alongside the in-house team to develop a product roadmap to continue growing the store & the experience
Poster fun
I had an idea to use posters, thinking they fit the overall aesthetic I was searching for, however they didn't have a purpose outside of the visual appeal. This is when I started to piece together that motion also had it's own story to tell and that came across when all the pieces come together (content, sound, speed, visuals, etc).
Ecommerce perspectives
Bringing it back to what I knew best, I wanted to see how the design system I'd accidentally created, translated back into the site, exploring the store, news/blog pages and a tour announcement page.
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