Product design case study
QUICK FACTS
Problem: Conversion needed improving, appointments needed better prep
My Role: Embedded UX designer
My approach: Led product team through 5 iterative design sprints
Deliverables: 5 interactive Axure prototypes
Customers: 25 qualitative usability tests
Results: Contribution to conversion increase, two new journeys launched using design
Context
John Lewis provides customers with a range of in-store services during one-on-one appointments with specialist staff members – such as personal styling, home design, nursery advice and beauty treatments – all of which are managed by an omni-channel appointment booking (OCAB) system.
Objectives
As the embedded UX designer in the OCAB product team I helped them with the following objectives for Personal Styling:
- Increase online bookings year-on-year
- Reduce number of booking calls to call centres
- Introduce 5 new appointment types to the proposition
- Increase quality of preparation for in-store appointments
- Increase customer satisfaction
My contribution
I guided the product team through 5 iterative design sprints each of which had a day of usability testing.
We moved the login page later in the journey so customers didn’t have a barrier to viewing available appointment times.
We also introduced a summary page to allow customers to review before booking, but we also wanted to show any gaps to persuade them to give more information to our stylists so the appointments were higher quality.
We introduced a page in the journey to allow customers to choose which stylist they’d like to book with. This emphasised the staff skills and personality, and helped customers find a stylist that matched their expectations and needs.
We learnt that clothes sizes varied from brand to brand so we made them multi-select to provide a size range to the stylist. This reduced the time stylists spent away from the customer during the appointment looking for alternative sized garments.
We introduced colour swatches for the customer’s eyes, hair and skin to better help the stylists choose clothes that suited their features. This reduced the time stylists spent away from customers during an appointment choosing more appropriate clothing.
In the my account area of the John Lewis website we displayed appointment bookings similar to physical appointment cards featuring the time, shop address, location in shop and stylist’s name. This allowed for a seamless channel swap from online to in-store.
We also explored showing previous bookings so customers can re-book from their account quickly because it would pre-populate all the customer’s information.
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For users who cancel from the appointment list page we check if they want to reschedule instead. We did this to reduce cancellations, but also to avoid users who want to reschedule from deleting all their booking data.
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For customers who cancel a booking we displayed an optional feedback request so the business can learn why and implement service improvements.
Final thoughts
Since the launch of the personal styling journey the team have used it as a template to quickly launch journeys for men’s personal styling and beauty consultancy which shows that our 5 design sprints are delivering value to the business past its original scope.
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